Hold On (be strong)
by Phantom Feline
Summary: SI/OC. POV 1st person. There are worse things to a person like me than waking up after certain death, even if it is to the life of a science-experiment. Especially when it doesn't last forever. This new world is rife with possibilities, open to me in a way my last one never was. And yes, I should probably stay FAR away from ninja...but where's the fun in that?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Happy birthday to me; here's a self-indulgent fic as I try to get back into the Naruto fandom! As you (probably, hopefully) noticed in the summary, this fic is written as a self-insert kind of deal. How _much_ of this character is me..? I'll leave you wondering. They're a little strange. This story is gonna be so full of improbabilities, I won't even lie, I'm writing this because I want to XD

Also, I stopped following canon Naruto even peripherally, like...before all that reincarnation nonsense. And especially the aliens. I also know NOTHING about Boruto, and as such disregard it. All I know is fanfic and wiki. As such, this story is AU, but in what way is still up in the air.

Also, also, the story title comes from the Korn song, because the music video makes me grin like a lunatic, and the lyrics are surprisingly on-point for the story.

 **/-/**

Hold On (be strong)

Chapter 1

It's hard to be truly calm in the face of inevitable death. I was a little surprised, actually, considering the sheer accepting apathy I was _so sure_ I could maintain.

The mind and body aren't always united, after all. However much some will try to disprove it, we're all animals at our basest level. Some of us more so than others. Very few of us are treated to the conditions that make our minds override our instincts, and I… Was not one of those exceptions. And I was glad of it—I trusted my instincts, for the most part, no matter how much some of them had _bothered_ my family.

(It wouldn't bother them anymore.)

Which meant that I shook. My heart thundered so hard my chest hurt; my breath came in short, panicked gasps. I didn't run, though, because there was no place _to_ run. I was trapped. And I didn't fear death, but I was an animal. My ancestors had only survived because of such instincts as _fear_ , fear in the face of fire and smoke and the things that hid in the dark. So the crackle of fire out of control made my blood surge with adrenaline, made my head ache with pressure. The smoke was thick and bitter in my throat, and there were no sirens outside –no help on the way– and I was going to die and it was all _so fucking pointless_.

The smoke grew thicker, the room darker, and the only light was the flickering orange glow from the crack under the door, and I made myself get off the floor, because it was too late for staying low to do any good. Too late. I would rather the smoke take me before the fire could. The bundle of fur and limp-limbs in my lap hadn't moved in minutes, tried to slip from my arms – _deadweight_ – when I stood to crawl onto my bed. Up here, it was hard to breathe without coughing, or choking, but it was either this or burning, and I didn't want to give into the indignity of screaming from the pain of fire eating away at my skin.

So I breathed in the bitter smoke, deep, and my lungs burned like my eyes, and my hands dug _(gently)_ into the long fur of the cooling body on my lap as I listened to the overwhelmingly loud roar of fire devouring the house around me. The snap and crash of some other part collapsing. And I waited, dizzier by the second. I waited for the darkness creeping in the corners to finally take me and—

I breathed, unimpaired. Pressure on my face. I was warm, strangely weightless. My eyes burned when I opened them, and there was only pitch darkness, anyway. I couldn't recall ever being in a place so dark.

My head hurt, pressure and pain, like a band of steel wrapped around my skull. And…I couldn't move. There was…nothing. Nothing at all.

/-/

So, I _probably_ wasn't dead.

I wasn't convinced that this wasn't one hell of a strange dream, though. Given, I'd never dreamed a dream where I was aware enough at the time to consider it weird enough to _be_ a dream, but. Who was I kidding? I didn't know if comatose people could dream, and if the smoke and flame hadn't killed me, that must be me. Rotting away in a hospital, little more than a vegetable, probably burned all to hell and likely dying a slow, slow death, pumped full of morphine. Brain cooking up weird shit until not even the machines could keep me going.

Thinking of it like that actually made the context of the maybe-dream make _more_ sense. It could even be attributed to the phantom body sensation…

And the obvious, 'I must be dreaming' _(what-the-ever-loving-_ _ **fuck**_ _)_ strangeness is me, aware that I'm currently inhabiting the body of a tiny, toddler, boy-child. And the only other person I see in the more lucid moments bares a _striking_ resemblance to a character out of an anime. The _Naruto_ anime. Orochimaru.

All told, it probably wasn't even the weirdest part of this dream that I noticed that he looked…different. Flashback-y different. Dressed in one of those bulky green vests, wearing a metal plate carved with the Konoha leaf…

My amateur dream interpreting led me to the conclusion that whatever was happening to my body in the outside world was…probably pretty unpleasant. Considering what reflected here.

(Still. It wasn't… _bad_. Considering. My dreams never really had been _bad_ ; I didn't have nightmares. I knew my head wasn't wired exactly right, and it suited me. I could live with it. But. This…might've been nightmarish for other people. I think.

But it didn't really hurt, so why..?)

See, it all felt pretty real, but I called it a dream because none of it really progressed…linearly. There were gaps. 'Scene skips', for no apparent reason, and they all bled into one another after a while.

Lying supine with all my limbs belted down and a palm pressed to my belly –a large, white hand that spanned nearly my entire abdomen– and then an overheated, overfull sensation, like I would just split open, popped like a balloon. Pressure.

Sitting upright, chubby baby hands clasped neatly in my lap, watching a long, clear line full of some not-quite-clear liquid. Not picking at the tape on my face (but really, _really_ wanting to, I just _couldn't move_ ), breathing carefully, swallowing repeatedly and trying not to acknowledge that I could feel the path of the cold liquid in the tube, through my nose and down my throat. Like ice in my stomach. Nausea. Fever.

Golden-yellow snake eyes, a familiar expression on a strange but ever-more-familiar face. Assessing. ('What's wrong with you?')

Supine, limbs bound. A palm on my belly; pressure, too much, too much, toomuch— _pain_.

Upright, hands clasped in my lap. A tube in my nose, cold in my stomach. A needle in the crook of my arm, a cold burn; morphine. Dizzy vertigo.

Watching Orochimaru's face; he tilted his head, and I tilted mine. His eyes gleam, narrow, and he moves his arms, folds his fingers into a handsign. I do the same. He smiles, slow.

Alone in a small, quiet room. Stone. A caged orange lightbulb on the ceiling. One metal door that buzzed like static electricity under my fingertips. A pipe low on the wall that trickled a small, constant flow of water into a narrow grate in the floor. A bowl of chalky, tasteless goop that was supposedly food. A thin, almost plastic-y blanket that was still sufficiently warm.

Supine, immobile. A palm on my belly. A sensation, not warmth but close. Building slowly, but still too much. Too much. Not pain but close. The pressure ceases to increase, but also holds steady at almost-too-much. My eyes open. Orochimaru withdraws his hand; it continues to glow green for a second, reflecting a hundredfold from scalpels and tubes and the sharp-edged darkness.

Sitting on the floor, short legs spread into a V before me. Hands straight above my head, held together by one large, increasingly familiar hand around my wrists. His other hand on the back of my neck, pushing forward as the one on my wrists pulled, until I was pressed flat to the floor, from cheek to belly, legs still a tight V. It didn't hurt. The flexibility of this little body seemed unreal.

Alone in the quiet orange-lit room. Little fingers numb with painkillers, poking at neat lines of sutures marching up and down major muscle groups. Finding the large shiny-smooth patch across my belly, like a burn. Noticing the patchiness of my skin, not unhealthy, but two obviously different colors. Crisscross lines of thin raised scars across my head, still tender when pressed.

Mimicking Orochimaru. Handsigns. Never the same order, faster, faster, faster. Only realizing at the end that I know their names because he was murmuring them the whole time.

Dark and quiet and sometimes, the sound of distant, echoing screams.

It might've kept on like that, a weird, dying dream that I watched from the front row seat –like a movie that only holds half your attention–, until I lost interest and drew too far away. Until the dream ended. (Until I died.)

Except then something happened, and I had to commit.

Because dream or not, when something felt _that_ visceral, it became real. Because, dream or not, it was the only life I had now.

I was awake.

/-/

 **A/N:** Drop a review on your way out. I've got something like five more chapters pre-written, and the inspiration is still coming on pretty strong. Later on (post chapter 6, so you have an idea how this thing is working out), I might even take requests on what you want to see, who you'd like the character to interact with, etc...


	2. Chapter 2

Hold On (be strong)

Chapter 2

I jolted out of a deep sleep abruptly, confused and groggy, alone and even more confused as to _why_. I slept a lot, constantly, and stayed that way unless Orochimaru was there, or the anesthetics wore off before I was healed enough to not feel the sharp throb of pain.

I sat up, vaguely uneasy, and then a little more so when the single orange light above my head flickered—

— _Terror_ , crimson red and choking like thick black smoke and no escape and crippling fear that hadn't even been there when I sat waiting for inevitable death—

Then the world around me shook, the ground lurching like it was an angry, living thing as the light stayed off longer, longer—dark.

Pitch black and choking terror and I was frozen because _this_ , this must've been what a nightmare felt like, thoughtless fear and the flavor of rust on my tongue, thin air and iron bands around my lungs, eyes stretched open too wide and burning. For one long second every sound when silent, static and thick—

Red. Red like corrosion, poison, liquid, bubbling fire, dripping from the ceiling as the stone walls cracked, split, shattered in pieces with the creaking snap like breaking ice. And I could _feel it_ , hot like the sun under a glass, burning hotter and hotter, like _fire_ , like the fire I had narrowly avoided once already come to claim me at last and I was still _trapped_ —

It was there, too close, and I could feel my skin _burning_ —

And then it was like my skin split open, but instead of pain there was relief, a sudden easing of the too-full pressure I had long since learned to ignore, and in the dim red light I could just barely make out a swarm of thick black shapes –like snakes, like vines– erupt upwards and then turn back to close around me. I jolted, still stupid from sleep and terror, and at the same time I registered the sensation –organic rough and blood warm; _where did they –what were they?– start and I end, was that my body the-edges-were-blur_ _ **ring**_ – the thought occurred that _this might be the fucking Kyuubi_ and _demonic chakra could fucking_ _ **dissolve**_ _me_ and—

I felt it touch me. Them (my chakra?). Saw the dim red light seeping through the tight, braided cocoon that surrounded me. Breathed, somehow. Kept silent _(always silent)_ count in my head.

One-one thousand…two-one thousand… (Inside me, I could feel… Something…)

Ten-one thousand…(I felt tired, like a weighted chain had been wrapped around my neck.)

Fifteen-one thousand… (My breath came in quick, shallow gasps. Not enough oxygen.)

Twenty-one thousand… (The outermost layer curled away like ash; the sickly red light became brighter.)

Twenty-five-one thousand… (Everything was going dim; my skin began to sting again.)

Twenty-nine-o—

.

My eyes opened, and it was completely dark. I was lying in shallow water…crushed under… The air was close and thick and dry, my lips coated in grit that crunched between my newly complete set of baby teeth when I bit down on the agonized groan that was working its way out.

I _hurt_. Agony like I had never felt before, like the burning I had only managed to escape once, after all.

I'm not even ashamed that I cried, then, even if it only made me hurt _worse_. Having that outlet made it better, and it killed thought and passed the time until _(at last)_ a more comforting darkness dragged me back down.

.

When I woke again it was better, in a relative sort of way. The previously sharp agony of broken bones and burned skin were distant, blanketed and blurred under the far-too-familiar sensation of a strong drug flooding my body. Everything throbbed in time with my heartbeat –slow– and thinking was like wading though sticky swamp mud.

I couldn't open my eyes, but the light coming through the thin skin was green. I couldn't move, but I wasn't lying down, either. I was…floating. And…it was hard to tell with my skin so thoroughly numbed, but there might've been more pressure around my mouth and nose. Like a mask. The air was absolutely scentless.

.

I was aware of more the next time, with the drugs mostly gone and the pain nearly the same. Suddenly having the ability to open my eyes again gave the slightest bit of clarity to my new circumstances, but in the same stroke ratcheted my base anxiety level up to eleven. Because I still couldn't move, but was now bracingly aware that I had about a dozen needles stuck into my skin, and was floating suspended in a giant glass tube with only a little half-mask to keep me from a drowning death.

Deep breath—hold—out. Okay. I was okay, just…

I had to think about it now, because I couldn't just sleep anymore. Something had changed. In my head, or. My body. _Something_. But I could _feel_ now, more than pain or cold or tingly-hot-numb. Inside. More than that strange pressure from Orochimaru—

Oh, I was dumb. Deliberate ignorance was one thing; purposefully _not_ thinking, not speculating because before all I had wanted was to _sleep_ … I _knew_ about this world, about ninjas that used _chakra_. That if I was something Orochimaru was experimenting on, it could only be fore a few things: A strange bloodline, a bloodline experiment, a curse seal test, or a potential body for him to possess later. And it all came back to chakra somehow.

Chakra that I could suddenly feel within me, alive and wild and restless like anxiety sitting over my heart. Chakra that I must have awoken somehow when the Kyuubi's corrosive aura threatened to burn me alive.

That minute of conscious terror was seared into my mind, almost literally _unbelievable_ already, but made even stranger by the distance of long sleep. Because…I remember vines. Thin as string and thick as this toddler-body's arms –and every size in-between– bursting from my skin, layering over and wrapping me up, and in some confusing way feeling like _me_ the same way every other limb did. In hindsight, it was _exhilarating_.

(I was awake and aware and felt _so much_ in this new body..!)

It was just a little bit of a bummer that I probably wouldn't get the chance to really live in it. One of the reasons I wanted to _sleep_ all this –(and I really couldn't call it a dream anymore, could I?)– away was because I _wasn't fucking stupid_. It may have been a long time since I paid any mind to canon 'Naruto', but I remembered enough. I'd had enough clues as to just when I'd landed. Orochimaru hadn't been ousted as a traitor yet—he was still experimenting on the people that were supposed to be his allies, still a member of the Leaf Village.

With my new, Kyuubi-awakened ability, well. I don't remember another Mokuton experiment besides Tenzō/Yamato surviving, but that didn't mean _anything_ , really. Orochimaru could've knowingly succeeded and then killed them doing something else dubious later on. For a scientist, not a lot of his test subjects really seemed to last. And that was pretty depressing if I thought about it for too long, so I _hadn't before_.

I was pretty good at not thinking about unpleasant things. Always had been. I couldn't afford to be broody alongside all my other character faults, so that ability got quite a lot of practice. With the ease of long practice, I thought about something else completely, instead.

I was awake and aware much more than I had ever been before, but I was currently stuck in a tube and everything outside of it was swallowed by black shadows. It was very much Orochimaru's style, but a faint thread of wariness continued to pull at the back of my mind: I hadn't once seen him since the Kyuubi, and there was someone else that would gladly snap up one of the Snake Sannin's experiments. Who already may have, but who the hell even knows with how unclear the timeline for the story was before the main character came into play. Danzō was someone I wanted to stay far, far away from.

I guess there was a benefit to the immobility and isolation and increasingly desperate attempts to keep my mind from spiraling into the horrible myriad of 'what-ifs' it could cook up. Puzzling out chakra was certainly distracting, even if it left me with so many more questions than answers. I could feel it inside me, impossible to ignore, and it made me wonder how it hadn't ever registered to any of my senses before, because I had _tried_ , okay? Of course I had, almost the very minute I had opened this new body's eyes, still mostly convinced I was dreaming.

It felt…a lot different from (what I'm now assuming was) Orochimaru's chakra, too. And that hadn't really felt like much until the full, pain sensation had come… Which was another dead-end thought to ponder, because he must have been trying to do something (had he succeeded?), but hell if I knew what. But I had _chakra_ , I could _feel_ it, and that was fucking amazing. Even if I couldn't figure out how to do anything with it at the moment; good sense said it was better not to try, honestly, while stuck in this tube with my (new?) life not in any immediate danger. I could wait if I needed to. Patience was one of the things I was good at…when I had a good reason to wait, anyway.

.

Even with how often I was now awake, I still occasionally missed big things, though now I suspected it was the drugs that made me sleep through them. (And then I wondered if all these chemicals were _doing things_ to my poor little child-brain.) Eventually I woke to find myself outside the tube, though the change in location wouldn't have been quite so jarring if it wasn't for the sudden _slam_ of input. I may as well have been existing in a vacuum before. A void. And now there was _so much_ that I almost missed the small, teensy-tiny detail that I was _strapped down to a metal table_.

It wasn't like sight or smell or any other physical sense, but it was so strange that it was _immediate_ , and my attention was trapped on the ( **one** , two, three…four, five? maybe six?) spots scattered around me, almost to the exclusion of realizing that I had opened my—no. No, I _hadn't_ opened my eyes, and that made me focus at last, because Orochimaru was standing over me, fingers prying my eyelids open until I kept them that way under my own power. Then…

He just…looked at me. I wasn't scared of him, really, because while this whole scenario was awful and what he was doing was pretty amoral…well. _Other_ people said that, didn't they? The worst I had ever hurt was when Orochimaru wasn't even there: Whenever he did anything to _me_ , I was always drugged to numbness during and after. Yes, more than likely something he did to me might eventually kill me, but I had already _died before_. And while he did worse to others (I knew, I remembered the screams), those people weren't me, and I had no one to call mine, so _what did I care_? I might not have ever gone out of my way to hurt someone before, but I wouldn't claim to be any better of a person than Orochimaru regarding the sanctity of life. I was just less ambitious, and without a scientific drive.

We must have stared at each other, unblinking, for over a minute before he very quietly hummed and deftly undid the restraints holding me down, then tugged me to sit upright. It…felt strange now that I was more aware, because he treated me a lot like a doll, and there was a tension to my body that hadn't existed there before. Still, during the entire time he poked and prodded I only moved once, involuntary and sharp when his hand lit up green and touched my skin because I could _feel_ that now when I hadn't before. It was _intrusive_ and everything in me wanted nothing more than to recoil and make it go away, but I didn't, because my instincts were good enough to fucking _know better_ than to try to pull away from Orochimaru.

I watched him, instead, the small line that was forming between his eyes and the growing frown on his lips while his glowing hand moved, stopped, moved again. It happened multiple times in seemingly random places before the glow faded away, and despite my best efforts, I was still achingly curious: I hadn't been in any pain before he applied that glow, so if it hadn't been healing, what was it? I was pretty positive that green chakra meant medical jutsu, but honestly wasn't sure. My knowledge of 'Naruto' was very severely handicapped, because…

I had never read beyond the very beginnings of Shippuden, _years_ ago. Everything else I knew was incidental curiosity from fan-wikipedias, and –to an even greater degree– fanficiton. A _lot_ of fanfiction. _Maybe_ the occasional episode viewed on late-night television, but they only ever seemed to show the same five episodes…

Ugh, this was horrible. If I lived long enough to see any other main characters face-to-face, there was a high chance of it being very, _very_ awkward. I'd read about almost all of them having sex, and that was just… Oh gods above, I lived in a world where someone like _Tobi_ existed.

 _(Hmm…Now_ that _was an interesting thought…)_

I must have actually _zoned out_ because the next thing I knew I was being hoisted up off the table and settled onto Orochimaru's hip like a small child (which, given, I currently was), and I had to take a minute to admire how brain-breakingly weird it was. He smelled like death and antiseptic and jasmine, and his hair was shockingly soft. What the fuck. What the actual fuck.

Then he was walking and I finally got my head together enough to look around, and it was like experiencing the worst sort of déjà vu. I knew this room; I remembered seeing it before, in ink and paper and then color animation. This was Orochimaru's lab, the one he was eventually discovered in and then chased from. But _cleaner_.

Were I anyone else, perhaps I would have felt a shiver of foreboding, then, as I caught and held the gaze of a man gagged and restrained on a table like the one I'd woken on. But, alas, I was myself, and I very much lived in the present. I counted, though. Orochimaru, one, that man—two, three, four, five…and three bodies so thoroughly vivisected that there was no chance they could still be alive. I _felt_ them. What was that called…sensor type? Handy. My situational awareness had never been anything to scoff at, but this was pretty cool. If, strange. Invasive.

I didn't even have it in me to be surprised when Orochimaru stalked to a dim corner –because the whole place was dark except for the spotlights over the tables, only a couple of which were on– and went _through_ it without pause, the only tell a…sort of flex, of what must have been his chakra as it covered me as well. It took less than a second, and then we were in a completely different, much smaller, room. The wall we came from was blank when I looked, and the opposite wall had a familiar looking door, but from this side I could see that it was covered in dark squiggles. Maybe that's why the door had always tingled, before.

He unceremoniously deposited me on the table and then I had to spend a minute blinking spots out of my eyes until I could see through the damn _bright_ light overhead. And then, huh, if I disregarded the dark gray color scheme, this room rather resembled a doctor's office. I…would probably see a lot of it in my future.

When I looked back at him, Orochimaru was just…standing there, scrutinizing. One hand cupping his elbow, the other his chin, index finger tap-tap-tapping against his cheekbone. The stark overhead light cast dark shadows from his brows, made the golden yellow of his eyes gleam metallically. He said a word that was completely new to my ears, and laughed so hard that he shook, moisture forming in the corners of his eyes.

And that was…weird. In pure self-defense, I ignored him completely –as completely as I could because even with my eyes closed it was almost like I could _still see him_ , to say nothing of when he actually touched my skin– until he opened the only door and deposited me inside…

Then it was like going blind, and not only because I had gone from clean white light back to murky, dim orange. The moment the door shut behind me, closing me into a room nearly identical to the one the Kyuubi had destroyed, my new chakra sense narrowed down to nothing. My equilibrium came back quickly enough, but the fact that the removal of such a new sense had staggered me for _any_ length of time was a little strange. And probably not the most reassuring sign.

I toddled over to the corner that contained my small pile of blankets (new; they didn't carry my scent at all) on unsteady legs and decided that I had had more than enough excitement for one day. It would be nice to sleep on solid ground again.

.

Later, once I'd slept long enough for the unnoticed-until-it-was-gone fuzziness to clear away, I took a tour of my new room, and discovered one new, vital difference. The opposite corner, with its bars on the floor and running water trickling from an open pipe about a foot above… This room was colder than my last, more damp, and sometimes…I felt moving air coming up from the floor, heard changes in the sloshing water passing beneath it.

Just something to keep in mind.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** *drops another chapter* I've got two more typed up, waiting for a final edit, and then one more chapter mostly written. Hope you guys like reading this at least half as much as I like writing it ;3

 **/-/**

Hold On (be strong)

Chapter 3

I started to notice things changing, after the Kyuubi, and it was really only then that Orochimaru began to make me feel…uneasy. He talked to himself. On one hand, his constant murmuring gave me the beginnings of a vocabulary; on the other, he was _talking to himself_ , because he sure as hell wasn't talking to me. _At_ me, maybe, but that didn't say much good about him because I had never once uttered a single word. Part of that was an old habit – _keep quiet until you know what the ever-loving_ fuck _is going on_ – but most of it was to keep any extra attention off myself, because Orochimaru already watched me too closely for comfort, and I did _not_ want to see what he would do if I slipped and spoke _English_.

Then, well.

I could recall very well the instances I had 'awoken' to Orochimaru's hand on my stomach, a green glow, the sensation of overflowing—the smooth burn-like scar it had left behind.

I knew what he was going to do this time when he pulled the starchy smock up over my head and strapped me down to a padded table, and I was actually curious, because I was _always_ curious for all that I didn't often say so.

His hand settled, warm and alive in a way that spoke mostly of my new perception, and the green glow started at the very edges of my periphery and then I _felt_ it, and understood. The quiet menace that I had begun to associate with Orochimaru –his chakra– smoothed out and scrubbed itself as it collected in his hand, until it contained only the barest edge of _him_ , and I very clearly felt the division between he and I. Starkly so. Enough that it managed to distract me from the first minute of steadily building pressure as more and more of that almost-neutral chakra collected and coiled in my belly.

As it was, I didn't even realize how intently I was focused on Orochimaru's face in desperate distraction until his eyes widened in an unmistakable 'oh shit' expression, and something inside shuddered and cracked and _surged_ —

I came back from that very slowly, with a new collection of half-fuzzed memories of Orochimaru muttering venomously, hands speckled with ink and face striped with thin bruises and pinprick spots of blood. When I could move again I found myself sporting what I was almost sure were seal tags of some sort, sticky with flexible adhesive, wrapped around the crook of both elbows, the base of my skull, and plastered across my tailbone. Orochimaru's foreboding expression kept my hands very well clear of my new additions as I was redressed, even though the one on my head itched the bare centimeter of hair growing back from the last time he'd shaved it off.

(Honestly, I missed my hair the most. At least when I was bored I could braid it or something, and it would've at least kept my ears warmer in that cold cell…)

He never did repeat the chakra-push again, though.

Instead, he started taking me out into the main lab when he 'worked'.

It was certainly an…experience. An experience and a half, even. I didn't know what I felt about it, even knowing what I morally _should_ feel about seeing people being vivisected to death. His own comrades, even, because more than once I saw the sign of Konoha, or white eyes, or people with red triangles on their cheeks.

Orochimaru never forced me to stay nearby when I was out, so for the most part I would remove myself to the other side of the room and keep busy trying to figure out this whole 'chakra sensor' thing. It was…different. There were always at least three living people in the lab besides Orochimaru, and it was from this changing pool of victims that I learned that emotions changed how I perceived them. Pain, fear, resignation, even unconsciousness; like color saturation, bright or dim or sharp or indistinct, mixtures and levels of vibrancy. If was also from them that I realized that during the surgeries, Orochimaru only administered a paralytic, not an anesthetic. They, unlike me, were awake and aware when the Snake Sannin cut into them.

Then I figured out what I felt about this. Uncomfortable. Unsafe.

(He could do that to me.)

And this whole time he had never really stopped watching me, like he was waiting for something, like any minute he would just crack up. Sometimes he would just…stop. Hold my chin between his forefinger and thumb and tilt my head back, up, side to side, blatantly contemplative. Once, he smeared streaks of blood across my cheeks and chin and laughed even while he wiped the marks away, shaking his head. Smiling.

Sometimes, I still woke from a drugged sleep with mostly-healed stitches, but it happened less and less often, and only once had I come to with my face so numb that I couldn't form my lips enough to swallow some desperately needed water. My fingers hadn't found stitches there, though, so I had no idea what he could have done.

I still didn't know what I looked like, because for all the metal around the lab, the lights were never bright enough to see a reflection. Anyway, I didn't want Orochimaru to catch me looking; it seemed safest to continue with the 'mindless doll' act, with how strange he had been recently. I didn't know my own face, or hair color, or eye color. All I did know was that I was male, probably between two and three years old, and that my skin was patchy like a merle dog. Some of it was a rich tan, and some was pigment-less pale, and overall I thought it was actually pretty cool to look at.

The rest of the time, I was alone, in 'my' room (cell), left to my own devices while Orochimaru was gone, probably pretending to still be loyal to his village. (Or not; he could be just outside the door, or in the lab, but he seal would keep me from ever knowing for sure.) It was cripplingly boring, and after a while the silence…weighed on me. There was only so long I could sit there, huddled under my blanket nest for warmth, dredging the depths of my memory for actual canon Naruto facts. A lot of the time it devolved into fanfiction plots, which, while good for entertainment, weren't exactly helpful.

Helpful for what? Escape, of course. Any little thing could help… Like how chakra was supposed to fucking _work_ , for example.

It was a pipe dream, maybe, but the longer this went on, the less safe I felt. And I didn't exactly _hope_ , but. Orochimaru was becoming increasingly erratic, and that didn't bode well for my continued existence. It would be an understatement to say that I really wanted to get out of this, alive, free, and otherwise un-possessed.

So far, I had managed to recall something about mixing physical and spiritual energy, which I was _pretty sure_ was canon, but it didn't help me in the slightest. How does one quantify something like 'physical' and 'spiritual'? It was all just _there_. So I was doing the metaphorical equivalent of poking my chakra, because I _could_ feel that, and trying to do anything else with it sort of felt like I was trying to teach myself telekinesis through stubborn force of will. (There was a lot of glaring at walls.) If I tried for long enough, sometimes I could succeed in making it 'move' a little, and _once_ I got a fist-sized glob of water to stick to my hand, before it exploded everywhere.

(What else was I supposed to do, try to climb the walls? What if I left a mark somehow? Hurt myself falling if I made any height? Then Orochimaru would know, and that was the _worst case scenario_.)

On a related note, I was insanely jealous of Orochimaru's chakra control. He routinely took the both of us through a solid stone wall without a single handsign, and while I could _feel_ the subtle flex of his chakra while he carried me, _how_ he did that was giving me envious fits. Every one of the hand seals he'd taught to me made my chakra move a little, every one in a slightly different way, but it didn't feel like his at all, far too…wild. Messy. That comparison made me think it was a control issue, something that could only be fixed with practice and use, and I needed to be _so careful_. I couldn't leave any obvious signs of what I was doing, and, in darker moments, I would imagine what would happen if I _did_ get caught, if I actually made something happen with those handsigns…

(I think I almost did, chasing the rising tide of my chakra as I _focused_ and flexed my hands—and then jerkily disengaging when a spark of teal-blue-green fizzled between my palms.)

With nothing else to occupy me, I might have become a little…obsessed with my chakra. But even without forced solitary confinement slowly chipping away at the edges of what I _really could not afford to lose more of_ , I probably would've fallen just as much in love with the idea of it. Superpowers. How cool is that? If I had the room, I could learn to jump so high I may as well be flying. Shape an element (and don't think I had forgotten about the probably-knockoff-Mokuton potential lurking in this body). Treat gravity like it was optional.

The ability to manipulate my chakra, even the smallest bit, gave me all the reason I could ever need to want to take a chance _(any chance)_ to escape. Damn the consequences.

(Escape was the goal; anything past that would be handled as it came. It hurt to hope too much. The only hope that I would allow myself at all was, when I escaped, I escaped far and fast enough to avoid being snatched up by Konoha's dark roots.)

/-/

I stared down at the empty bowl that usually contained the chalky paste masquerading as food with something like hopefully incredulous disbelief. That had never happened before. Most of the time Orochimaru would empty and refresh it before it could even become half empty, because it was gross but apparently so full of nutrients that I only needed a little bit to satisfy my hunger. But now it was empty.

I tugged the blanket more securely around my shoulders and eyed the door with some suspicion. I didn't usually like going too close to it because the seals made my skin itch something fierce, but I had noticed before that the power seemed to wane over time, just like the ones he was constantly reapplying to me. If he had been gone long enough for my food to deplete, then maybe…

The metal door was cold under my palm, but felt only of solid steel, completely inert and without the slightest tingle to be had. Well. I bit down on the inside of my cheek and looked up at the heavy latch, just out of reach, eyes narrowing in brief consideration as I stepped back and looked around the mostly barren cell. The door swung out, so. I spread both my blankets out and folded them each into the tightest square I could, and placed them against the door so that I could climb up. It still wasn't quite high enough to get enough leverage until I added my overturned bowl to the stack.

I heaved and pushed, and only just managed not to go head-first onto the floor when the door swung open and my blanket stack tipped. Shaking out my stinging hands, I squinted into the gloom, not even half illuminated by the orange light seeping out from behind me, and spent another minute once more using the bowl as an improvised stepping-stool to hop and strain until I could slam the button to turn on the overhead light. Dishearteningly, the light that came on was only about half as bright as I was accustomed to it being.

Then another piece of oddness occurred to me, and I couldn't help frowning as I closed my eyes and concentrated. Nothing. I knew I should be able to sense Orochimaru's unfortunate victims from this room, but there was nothing. Unless he'd gone and sealed that wall since the last time he'd brought me out, then there was no one alive out there.

I had considered the possibility a couple times before—that I would live long enough for Orochimaru to be discovered by his village and chased out. Somehow, it had never occurred to me that he wouldn't immediately find some way to come back for me. But even if that wasn't what had happened…Orochimaru _must_ have been gone for a while. The seals on the cell door were inert. Now was my best chance to _escape_.

I took in a deep breath that only shook a little, and looked around the room with new eyes, assessing. I couldn't hope to copy Orochimaru's jutsu to get through the wall with my poor control, so that was immediately out. High up the wall, just below the ceiling and a few feet from the top of the sink was a grate-covered vent that looked like it would be large enough for me to wiggle through. The trouble was that there wasn't enough to stack to get that high. On the other hand, I _did_ have chakra, but if Orochimaru came back and found me in the middle of that… Getting out of the cell was one thing, but actively escaping, displaying the inclination and ability to do so…

 _No_. I shook myself and went over to the sheet-metal base of the sink. I'd been stymied all the time by what-ifs for most of my life, overly cautious, thinking too much, _compliant_. That might've helped to keep me alive so far, but if I didn't do something now, I might never get the opportunity again. I might die here. Orochimaru might _come back for me_. I could _not_ waste this opportunity.

Cautiously, I placed my hand against the metal and tried moving chakra into it, then tugged it away, testing the sensation. It felt weirdly like I had a little bit of glue on my skin, a very slight resistance to being pulled away. I tried again after stretching up as high as I could, the tips of my longest fingers just curling at the edge of the sink, and then spent the next minute huffing out agitated breaths and rubbing my now-sore tailbone after my control slipped halfway through lifting my second hand.

I spread a blanket out on the floor before I did anything else, and tried again.

On attempt thirty-something, all four tags glued to my skin abruptly fizzled and crumbled to acrid-smelling ash, which gave me a good excuse to take a break, if only to wash off.

Trying very hard not to glare at the sink –I _know_ , alright?– I went over to the storage cabinet –different from the filing cabinet in the corner that _still_ hummed with angry chakra that probably indicated some sort of security seal I was not inclined to go near– and pulled out a clean set of clothes, a white smock and pair of shorts identical to the ones I was already wearing. After I made sure the door wouldn't close behind me, the second blanket repurposed as a doorstop, I skulked back into the cell and my only real source of water. The chilly, damp air was even more unpleasant without a cotton barrier, so I worked as quickly as I could to get the ash off, but was still shivering as I ran back into the marginally warmer room before dressing there.

I couldn't see the one that had been at the base of my skull, obviously (I was not a Hyuuga, thank everything), but the other three had left behind rectangular, bruise-like discolorations, with almost-black blotches at the very center. Gentle, and then less gentle, prodding confirmed that they didn't hurt. That was something, anyway. I didn't really have the time to stop and wonder about them.

Before I started trying to chakra-climb up to the air duct again, I sat down for a while and tried my hand at meditation. I was almost certain my problems were along the lines of 'not enough chakra' and/or 'losing focus', so I needed to somehow evenly split my attention between keeping the chakra where I needed it _and_ moving my body to where it had to go. Goddamn, and I was still only using my hands; weren't feet supposed to be even more difficult to focus chakra in?

Taking a deep breath and trying to quell my (panicked) frustration, I stretched to hook my fingertips around the lip of the counter and pushed just a _little_ more chakra—

With an awful screech, my hand sunk into the metal, and then was forcefully blown back when I lost control of my chakra. Wide-eyed and shaking out my stinging hand, I dubiously stared at the perfect handprint pressed half an inch into the matte gray surface. Less chakra, okay.

Hand cautiously flat to the metal, I focused…and managed not to blow my hand back when it dented the metal again. The dark bruises where the tags had been seemed suddenly a lot more ominous. Oh fuck.

 **/-/**

 **A/N:** I look forward to your speculation~


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** I'm probably going to regret posting all my pre-written chapters so quickly, especially once I run out. (two more after this)

 **/-/**

Hold On (be strong)

Chapter 4

I called shenanigans on this bullshit.

So, best guess, those tags had been chakra suppression/restriction seals of some sort, and now any iota of control I had managed before had gone right out the window. Three more attempts to climb, three more little toddler handprints pressed into solid metal that I would've had trouble denting as a fully-grown adult, and to my dismay I could no longer even achieve that mild sticking effect anymore.

Biting down on the flesh of my cheek in silent frustration, I gave up on the direct route and moved over until I was standing before bare stone. I took a couple minutes to breathe and try to calm down, which really didn't work well because I was a spiteful grudge-holder and used to succeeding in anything I tried my hand at pretty quickly. I wasn't used to failure (unless you counted math). I still _tried_ , though, and I was slightly, _marginally_ , less frustrated when I reached out and pressed my palm flat to gritty stone. _Slowly_ pushing chakra down my arm—

And I may or may not have shrieked in inarticulate rage when a tiny layer of rock sheered off from the wall like shale, where it stuck to my hand and crumbled. I'm not telling.

I will also not admit to balling up a blanket for the sole purpose of absolutely _waling_ on it.

After what may or may not have been a tantrum induced nap, I was just a little bit calmer, and had also been struck with an idea.

Once more skulking into the cell, I crouched down beside the barred hole in the corner, considering it. If the bars weren't there, I wouldn't even have to squeeze to fit down there. Yes, that was also the hole I used to do my business, but it had to _go_ somewhere. The room never flooded from the constant stream of water from my drinking pipe; the room never smelled like waste or stagnant water. Sometimes I could even hear the water sloshing or moving faster, which meant it either came from or _went_ somewhere.

I wrapped my fingers around one of the bars, and found with some vindicated satisfaction that it was thin enough for my thumb to just barely overlap the first joint of my index finger. I now had the ability to dent metal on _accident_ ; time to see what I could do on purpose.

Tapping my knuckle on the bar, I spent a minute thinking about the best way to approach the problem before pushing chakra into it. I didn't know how big that drain was, how deep the water was or how much empty air there was before I _hit_ water, so it probably wasn't smart to try bending the bars straight down. I also wanted to make the largest possible gap to reduce the risk of getting stuck…

Eight bars, about two inches space between each; I would definitely want to go down feet-first. The hole was in a corner, bars parallel to one wall and perpendicular to another; the water pipe only stuck out about three inches from one wall, but drained into a center-space—ugh, the cold water that trickled from it would be awful to work around. But I had my plan, now, even if I had to grudgingly shed my shirt to do it, because it was worse to wear wet clothing and risk getting sick.

(If I got caught escaping because I got held up from a fucking _cold_ so help me god…)

I would work from the outside, inward, pushing the most distant bars as much as I could to clear the center, then start again on those closest to me, pulling by degrees until I made the largest hole I could.

Critical-fucking-thinking. Making tools out of unconventional non-tool items, coming up with creative solutions to hypothetical problems. I'd always hated strategy games, but ask me how to get something out of twelve-foot circle without stepping inside, using only shoelaces, eraser nubs, and paperclips, and you'd better believe I could do it.

It was wholly satisfying to make use of that long-unused skill for something so worthwhile.

.

Potentially exhausting my chakra only occurred to me once, while I took a break to dig through the cabinet for the jars of food powder I knew were there. Within the first five minutes of bar-bending I'd realized that it wouldn't be done quickly, because while pushing chakra into the metal would dent it, it wouldn't _bend_ the way I needed it to without physical effort behind it. The first bar had been pushed satisfyingly flush to the wall, but my arms ached from the unaccustomed exercise, to say nothing of my hands and back from the effort of _pushing_.

So I needed to pace myself, no matter how anxious slowing down made me, and I needed to eat to refuel my reserves to keep working. My stomach _burned_ with hunger.

In between scooping a bit of powder into the bowl and mixing it into a paste with a little water and two fingers, my mind wandered back to that resolution and poked it curiously, and. Huh. How did someone recognize chakra exhaustion? Besides the obvious fainting-and-unconscious-for- _x_ -days. How much of my chakra was I even using to make the bars malleable enough to shape?

I honestly couldn't tell. My chakra was just… _there_ , present, like a thought lingering at the back of my mind. Available whenever I tried to call it up, in all its wild, uncontrolled glory. So unless something changed while I was working, the limits of my chakra wasn't something I was likely to know until I ran headfirst into it.

Well. Something to look forward to.

Break over, I set my bowl aside with a hollow wooden clunk and gave one last stretch before stalking back into the coolness of cell. Unfortunate discovery of my limits notwithstanding, I wouldn't call it a night until at least two more bars were bent.

Some unknown amount of time later, but shortly after I reached the halfway point –discovering, to my great relief, that pulling was easier on my body than pushing– I noticed that the overhead light in the 'doctor's office' was now dimmer than the orange light of the cell. I didn't waste precious time cursing or contemplating, but hurried to ransack the place of anything that might be even the slightest bit helpful to my efforts, because doing so blind didn't appeal.

My loot was thus; two scalpels, five changes of clothes, four jars of food powder, three large IV bags full of an unknown clear liquid, three coils of medical grade tubing, two sterile needles in packaging, six small bottles which presumably contained some type of liquid medicine (or venom), two unused syringes, and one new blanket (that I immediately added to my nest).

I didn't immediately go back to widening the hole afterwards, lingering over the pile of loot, picking it up and turning it over because I had an _idea_. It was the work of minutes to unwrap some of the flexible tubing and knot a loop of it just below the lid of one of the jars, and then I was crouched over my escape-hole-in-the-making and lowering the weighty jar into the darkness. I went slowly, and immediately drew it back up the moment the vibration of glass on stone shook up the rubber looped around my fist, hand over hand, and then less carefully once I'd felt wetness. With the jar sitting upright on the floor and the tube held taut vertically…the water down there was midway up my toddler-self's chest.

Somewhat grim, I added 'make a flotation device' to my needs, right under 'finish making the goddamn escape hole'. It didn't matter how strong a swimmer I may or may not have been—exhaustion killed, and I didn't know how long that drainage pipe was.

.

I double and triple-checked my knots again, pulling as hard as I could at the tubes braided around my chest and the now air-filled IV bags attached to them, and deemed it as acceptable as it could be. The hardest part was deciding what I could afford to bring with me; what I wanted to take versus what I could realistically transport through the unknown terrain I would be diving into. So I was wearing three shirts, two pairs of shorts, and had one jar of food powder and the scalpels wrapped in another set of clothes, nestled into my bowl and tucked into my shirt, tight against my belly.

Well. One way or another, it was time to leave.

I fell into the dark unknown, leaving the cell behind me.

/-/

Everything hurt, but I didn't even care.

It was _bright_ , so bright I could barely open my eyes –and, wow, my left eye was actually _really sensitive_ – but worth it because that was the _sky_ up there. Those were trees around me, moving air that didn't stink of damp stone or death or antiseptic. _Colors_. _Sounds_ , animal sounds, living, moving things that I couldn't really feel, but also _didn't_ feel like fear or pain or slowly building stress-hysteria-madness.

Eventually, the sun moved enough that I was no longer lying directly in a sunbeam, and then I had to move because I was still half-submerged in the water and I was getting cold again. My fingers clenched, and I didn't even grimace at the gross feeling of stringy-rotten grass and slimy mud welling up between them, because it was still a new sensation to this body and I welcomed it.

Less welcome was what I discovered when I forced my recalcitrant body to sit up.

I was dizzy, a pulsing throb spread over my forehead that suggested I had smacked it pretty good when the water level in the tunnel had abruptly risen and quickened. More alarming was the state of the layered smocks plastered to my skin. The grayish cotton was stained all the colors of blood, fresh-bright and vivid over my belly, brownish and paler as the water leeched it outwards. I no longer had the bowl that…fuck, that had contained the glass jar full of food powder. My floats drifted sluggishly in the current, just barely attached to me by the last knot.

I cautiously pressed one little hand to my belly—the wetness there was sticky and warm, fresh. Oh, fuck. Fuckfuck _fuck_.

The pain spiked high enough to drag a groan out of my unused throat when I begun pulling myself backwards, away from the bank of the little river, leaving the repurposed IV bags to drift away like awkward bubbles in the slow current. When the ground under me no longer squished, I stopped, panting in exhaustion and anxious frustration both. Peeling the soaking, muddy smocks up over my head was _(a mistake)_ so breath-stealingly painful that I had to stop, retching into the iron-smelling cotton that was stuck to my face, then sobbing aloud when that only made it _worse_.

My stomach looked like it'd had razor wire dragged over it. There were still little pieces of glass stuck into the gashes, and I couldn't even get them out because my fingers were numb and touching the wounds was like stabbing myself with a hot poker. The skin around it –that wasn't loose and bloodless from being submerged in water for however long– already looked inflamed, felt hot with the start of infection. The cuts weren't actively bleeding –seeping, maybe–, but I couldn't even remember if that was supposed to be good or bad. Bad, probably.

With much more care than I had given to sitting up, I laid down again, the brilliantly green grass warm and only a little itchy against my bare back. I swallowed thickly and felt my eyes burn treacherously.

Well. I'd escaped, anyway. If only I'd thought to wrap the jar one more time, or leave it behind entirely.

What a _stupid_ fucking way to die.

I'd lived through Orochimaru for, what? Two years? A little more? And _this_ was what would do me in? Infection or blood loss, unable to even _stand_?

…maybe I'd 'wake up' in a different life, again. A different place.

…but I'd really wanted to be _here_! I wanted to play with my chakra! Maybe not get involved with all the drama of the 'story', but this world was _so cool_.

Almost petulantly, I tugged on that _feeling_ inside, wild vitality and vast, boundless energy. It was _mine_ , and I hadn't even gotten to learn to do anything with it.

 _I_ hadn't gotten to do anything. My legacy was in whatever notes Orochimaru left behind, a few baby-sized handprints dug into a metal cabinet… A little skeleton near a riverbank that might be found one day, or might be washed away in the next flood.

Fuck, I was crying again. Fucking _useless_.

.

The chills started up just a little before sunset. I ignored the sensations as much as I could, greedily taking in the scenery instead. This would be a peaceful place to die, anyway. Much better than the last. (Definitely better than the cell.) The sound of the river was soothing, and when the wind shifted I could smell warm, rich earth instead of the cloying reek of the smocks heaped nearby. Once, I saw a flock of birds.

It was noisy out here, compared to the cell and lab, but it was a good kind of noisy. I rather liked tree frogs, and they seemed plentiful.

The sunset was _magnificent_. I couldn't remember the last time I'd just watched the sky change, even before the fire. Orange to pink to purple, dark blue, and then… _stars_. So many stars, so clear without smog or light pollution. They were beautiful.

I was too tired to feel anything besides mildly resentful, anymore, so when my eyes burned and the stars blurred and swirled overhead, well… After that I let the creeping cold drag me under to sleep. Maybe I'd have a better chance wherever I woke up next.

.

Something touched my cheek, alive and vital like Orochimaru, but also _not_. It took me too long to pry my eyes open, like they were crusted shut, but I was too weak to rub at them, could only just make my fingers twist into the lush, cold grass. The light was dim and gray, everything blurry like looking through frosted glass, but I could see a fuzzy blotch of white-orange-black looming over my head. And. Eyes?

They(?) said something(?) and the little touch on my cheek trailed up, closer to my eye, and this was all very interesting but I felt so _tired_ , even with the way my chakra was surging so restlessly –almost _violently_ – under my skin, and I _couldn't_.

My world flipped and wretched sideways, and everything went blessedly black again.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** *casually worldbuilds*

 **/-/**

Hold On (be strong)

Chapter 5

"Kaida-sama," one large, amber-red eye slit open to acknowledge her. "I need your wisdom."

"You don't need to be so formal anymore, girl," Kaida said, opening her other eye, milky white from an old, _old_ injury. "Headship is yours, has been long enough for you to know better."

"Kaa-chama," Kana drawled, just to see her mother bare her fangs in an unwillingly amused grimace, but unease didn't allow her to enjoy the sight as much as she should've. It was so hard to get her mother to smile anymore. To do much of anything, anymore. "I really could use your advice on a…rather urgent dilemma."

Kaida was sitting up now, a tower of lean strength, long black fur, and more scars than Kana had years. As always, she felt far too small beside her mother, but such were their respective choices; Kaida had bobbed her tail in ceremony, while Kana had kept hers to allow it to split. Kaida's whiskers twitched, the only change to her stoic expression; she used to say that she had picked up a lot of bad habits from her humans.

"Would this have anything to do with your own daughter returning so early, the contract still unsigned?"

The worst part, Kana mused depressively, was that her mother didn't even seem surprised. Then again, her mother hadn't seemed much of _anything_ for over a decade now, since she had abdicated and passed headship of the clan over to Kana, when in truth Kaida wasn't far passed her prime. When Kaida's contractor, the last Summoner of the Cats, had died in battle without signing another of his clan. And now the Uchiha clan was lost to them. Their war of attrition against the Hawks and Crows, lost as well. Unlikely to ever gain another Summoner, because the humans of now were often far too cautious to throw their chakra into the ether for a Clan to grab.

"It would," Kana agreed, turning to quickly make her way back into the village, knowing her mother and advisor would follow, now, no matter how much she would rather be sunning herself. "Mirai-chan brought back a human kitten. Chikao-sensei assures me that he can save the boy from the infection in his blood, but would like the previous head's opinion on a strangeness of his chakra." She paused, then added tentatively, "And I would like to know if he is a good candidate to sign our contract."

Kaida remained silent at her side, stride never breaking, but the heavy physicality of her chakra became almost unnaturally still.

It was painfully obvious where Mirai had taken the human-kitten; their house was surrounded by cats of all shapes and sizes. Yet undedicated kittens with their tails straight up in excited curiosity; those like Kana who kept their tails to allow them to split and fork; those like Kaida who bobbed their tails and grew taller than humans—more than twice again that when they chose to stand on their hind legs.

The former clan head did just that, standing to loom like a wrathful kami, silently encouraging the others to clear a path. _At speed_. Kana pushed herself upright as well, knowing that she didn't cut nearly of an imposing figure as her mother…but then again, few could. Kaida was a _beast_ , a relic of the most deadly wars.

Mirai and Chikao were exactly where Kana had left them, in what was traditionally the nursery when a littler was born under her roof. The largest change was that Chikao had spread a strong-smelling remedy over the ugly, deep, _infected_ cuts that tore up the human-kitten's soft belly. Mirai, Kana's prodigious runt, had moved very little, her pink nose mere centimeters from the human's; her barely-forked tail was still in a way that meant her daughter was focused on her chakra sense.

"Chikao-sensei, Mirai-chan," Kaida acknowledged quietly, her good eye on the unconscious human laying so still before her. He was a bit of a strange looking one, Kana admitted privately. She hadn't thought that their skin could have more than one color, but like her –black and white–, he was brown and white. He also had a strange arrangement of markings on his face, thin slashes of cold-looking blue, one on each cheek and another down the center of his chin.

Mirai murmured a distracted greeting, never once removing her mismatched eyes from the boy, but Chikao stood to greet them properly, pale green eyes half-closed and deeply forked tail slowly swishing against the floor behind him. "Kaida-san," their eldest healer said, nodding once at Kana as well, but fixing her mother with an inscrutable expression at whatever he saw on his agemate's face. "What is it?"

Kaida flicked her ears back and stepped softly closer, bringing her head near enough to make Kana's brazen daughter back off. "He looks familiar," the previous clan head murmured, gently pressing her nose to the human-kitten's bare skin and inhaling deeply. Her head was the size of the boy's entire body. "This boy is of the Senju."

Chikao startled and blinked bemusedly down at the human, creamy fur a striking contrast to Kaida's deep black. "Are you certain? I though they were nearly extinct, none left at breeding age."

"I am," the only bob-tail in the room confirmed, more intent than Kana remembered her being in years. "He shares a similarity of feature to one I saw many years ago, but," her mother paused, openly mystified, and spoke as if only to herself. "His coloring and chakra nature are very similar to _both_ of them."

"Baa-sama?" Mirai asked gently, once more creeping closer to the unconscious human. Kaida turned an unexpected and startlingly fond look at her granddaughter.

"You did very well, Mirai-chan," the eldest said with a strange sort of humor, before turning her amber-red eye back to Kana. "It is my advice that you should attempt to get this human to sign our contract, if he recovers as Chikao-sensei expects. He is very young, however. Put him in classes with the other kittens, encourage writing as much as you can, so that he may sign as early as possible." There was a warrior's cunning on her face when she regarded the human-kitten again. "I believe there is promise in this."

Kaida left without another word or backwards glance, likely to return to her solitary basking—how she spent most of her time. Kana carefully kept her tail from giving away the –likely unfair– spike of annoyance she felt, turning to Chikao instead.

"When do you suppose he will awaken, sensei?" The elder hummed thoughtfully, one last lingering look where Kaida had departed, then turned to sniff the human over.

"A couple of days, perhaps. His body is fighting the infection quite strongly, and as Kaida-san said, he _is_ young, with the vitality that implies. I will give him honeyed milk in the meantime, and remain nearby until his fever has broken."

"Thank you, Chikao-sensei. You may remain here if it is more convenient for you." Chikao bobbed his head in friendly acknowledgement. "Mirai-chan, come, I must speak with you."

"Kaa-chan?" Mirai asked meekly, once Kana had settled them into the plush, feather-filled pillows that littered the area of her oft-used meeting room. "Are you mad at me?"

Kana sighed and tucked her paws more comfortably under herself, gazing at her little calico child, the runt that shouldn't have survived, fully grown and barely half Kana's size. "I'm not mad, Mi-chan. I want an explanation, though. You were very lucky to find such a promising potential contractor, but you know you shouldn't bring humans here without my permission beforehand. And you _know_ how much effort and pooled chakra it takes us to breech that barrier without an active Summoner on contract."

Mirai smartly kept her mouth shut and tried to order her reasoning before she answered. By the length of time it took her, Kana strongly suspected she was just making excuses for impulsive action. Still, she wanted to hear it anyway.

"He was going to die there, Okaa-sama. He was alone and hurt and sick, but his chakra was still so _alive_. And then he opened his eyes." Her daughter was undeniably enamored, ears perked and white whiskers fanned wide. "They're like mine, kaa-chan! Red on his white side, and dark on the brown side; I've never seen a human like that before!"

Kana resisted the impulse to comment on the fact that her daughter had _never_ seen a human before two months ago, and eyed Mirai thoughtfully. It was an uncanny coincidence. The right half of her daughter's face was black, and on that side she had the amber-red eye color that Kana got from her own mother; the left was mostly orange, but a splash of white fur crossed that eye, and it was pale blue. The human's face was in large part a light brown, except a sizable portion of the upper-left part of his head—including one of those color marks and an eye. A good omen, perhaps?

Mirai shifted uncomfortably on her pillow, ears slowly flattening the longer Kana remained silent. Kana smiled in glee as an idea occurred, sly and full of teeth. Mirai sank down until only her eyes and ears showed in the plush red fabric.

"Well, then. Take care of your new otouto, Mi-chan. If you want to keep him, make sure he learns fast and well. He's _your_ responsibility."

Mirai whined quietly. Ah, music to Kana's ears.

/-/

"He doesn't talk, kaa-chan. I don't think he knows how. I told him my name, though, and I think he understood, but he didn't tell me his."

"Maybe he doesn't have one, Mi-chan."

"Don't humans name their kittens when they're born?"

"Usually, daughter. I don't think your otouto came from a normal family though, do you? No? Perhaps you should come up with a name for him. Teach him how to write it."

"Really? Um…How about Yukito?"

"Traveler?"

"Well, he will be once he's strong enough, right? Written like _this_."

"Ah, I see. He could very well be a blessing to us, if he can sign. I want him to understand as much as possible before he does, but your obaa-sama wants him to seal the contract within the year."

"Why so soon, kaa-chan? Kin-chan says it won't be safe for him to go back to the humans by himself for at least a decade."

"Mm, Kin-chan is right, for the most part. I believe…your Kaida-obaa-sama wants little Yukito-chan to get as many gifts from the contract as he can, to better his chances out there amongst the ninja."

"Well, what does _that_ even mean?"

"The younger he is when he binds himself to the Cats, the more time he has to grow into the things we can give him. Sharpened senses, mainly, but there are others."

"Will it help his eyes any?"

"Have you noticed something wrong with your otouto's eyes, Mi-chan? Chikao-sensei never mentioned any problem."

"I…don't know? No? I think he can see well, but he squints a lot in the sun."

"Hmm. You'd best go teach Yuki-chan how to write his name, Mi-chan."

/-/

"Very keen, that new 'grandson' of mine." Kaida commented as she lay down in the grass beside Kana. The clan head let herself feel tentatively hopeful that this new trend would stay true; since Mirai brought Yukito home, Kaida had been much more involved with the rest of the clan.

Kana made a quietly inquiring noise, briefly glancing at her mother before returning her full attention to her 'youngest child', where he was doing a decent job of attempting to chakra-walk up a bamboo stalk thicker than he was tall. He was still being blown back more than sticking, but he almost never damaged the stalk's surface anymore.

"He's a sensor type, too. Quite the treasure, our little Yukito. Have his classes been going well?"

"Daiki-san says he's the most attentive kitten in the class," Kana reported dryly. She remembered classes; 'most attentive' meant that Yukito wasn't one of the ones dumping his ink-bottle on someone else's head. "He does appear to listen quite intently, though, and can at least understand simple sentences."

Kaida hummed, eyes half-closed and focused on the human-kitten. Her mother never really spoke of it, but Kana suspected that she watched the boy so closely for hints of her own past. If the boy really was of the Senju –and Kana didn't doubt her mother on this– then there was a very good chance that Kaida had fought against Yukito's forbearers as an Uchiha summon. Kaida had been in battle for a very long time, since before the ninja had come together in villages—it was just the _most recent_ –the _last_ – Uchiha that she had bonded to most strongly. The suspicion might have worried Kana more if her mother wasn't so very _set_ on this human binding to them.

"Do you know how old he could be?" Kana asked into the warm air, a long pause when Yukito folded himself down into apparent meditation. She thought his actions seemed a little odd for such a young child, especially one lacking so much guidance that he wouldn't even speak.

"No more than three or four, I should think," Kaida answered slowly, likely dipping into memories of a time when she was summoned to safeguard children too young for the battlefield. When her mother didn't comment farther, Kana prodded.

"Don't you find Yuki-chan's manner…odd? For such a young human?" The bob-tail huffed inelegantly, loudly enough that Yukito cracked open his red eye –and Mirai was right, he did tend towards squinting with that eye– to watch her for a moment before going back to his meditation.

"Perhaps in another kitten, but no. Not this one. It would not surprise me in the least to discover that he is much smarter than his lacking lingual abilities suggest. Give him time."

They lapsed into silence for a long time, watching Yukito slowly but surely grasp onto a chakra skill that should've been beyond his ability.

"Kaa-san?"

"Hm?"

"Will Yukito sign with the Senju name?"

"No, Kana. This kitten is ours, now; he will sign only as Yukito."

/-/

"That boy is a cat, Kana-sama."

Kana blinked slowly and tilted her ears forward, trying and failing to make sense of Daiki's statement. The young bob-tail continued to watch her with serious golden eyes.

"Elaborate please, Daiki-san."

The gray tabby stood from his pillow, kneading it a few times restlessly before settling down again, dark whiskers pinned back to his cheeks. He looked exceedingly uncomfortable when he noticed Yukito watching him, curled comfortably into his own blue pillow with ink and paper to practice his kanji. Daiki's ears folded back flat, and Yukito calmly broke eye-contact with the older male, blinking calm-languid slow.

"See?" Daiki asked pointedly, and it took Kana a second—

"Oh," she breathed. That was quite a bit of non-human body language Yukito was apparently fluent in. She shouldn't have doubted her mother; he 'spoke' it well enough for not having the ears and whiskers for it.

"Yes," Daiki agreed, tone musing. "It would probably be best to make sure he doesn't have the opportunity to learn henge before he begins verbalizing, or he might just decide _not_ to."

"Oh my," Kana laughed. "Good point, Daiki-san. Mirai-chan might pluck her whiskers in frustration if Yuki-chan decides not to speak before she can get him to call her aneki."

Daiki laughed quietly, and shortly after took his leave.

Paper rustled.

"Yukito-chan," her human-kitten looked up at her, obligingly, and Kana purred quietly. He was _adorable_ now that the fur on his head was growing out, rich dark brown from his darker skin and snowy-white from the pale, a tendency to clump together into fine spikes and fall over his eyes when he wrote. "Can you show me that?"

He turned his most recent practice sheet around and held it up for her to see; the kanji for his name, over and over, just as his Kaida-obaa-sama asked of him.

"Good job, Yukito-chan. Do you want to go outside now, or learn new words with me?"

It had been five months since Mirai brought the human back from her scouting trip, and although the boy still hadn't spoken he continued to quickly advance in other ways. Recently, they had had to begin supervising him more closely, because he had moved on to water-walking after apparently becoming satisfied with his chakra-sticking proficiency.

Yukito blinked his mismatched eyes once and then gathered up his writing materials, settling himself down before Kana's own pillow, face serious and attentive. Kana purred a little louder.

/-/

Mirai bounded up to them, fur so on-end that the calico-runt appeared nearly twice her usual size, eyes huge on her face. "Kaa-chan! Baa-sama! Gin-kun said something happened to Yuki-chan!"

"Calm, Mi-chan," Kana sighed, so very ready for the day to end, and it wasn't yet noon. She was doing her very best to ignore the unsettling grin on her mother's face as the battle-scarred bob-tail watched her grandson try to manipulate the handful of lively green vines that had apparently _sprouted from his body_.

"What." Mirai said weakly, taking in the spectacle that was her little brother, his eyes narrowed in fierce concentration as he tried to get a vine that was growing from his inner-elbow to wrap around his forearm. "What is _that_?"

"A bloodlimit," Kaida purred, crouched down so that her head was near and level to the human that she was becoming increasingly fond of. "I do believe that Yukito should sign our contract now."

/-/

"Do you understand, Yukito-chan?" Kana asked her son one last time as she unrolled the contract to the next empty space, a long line of Uchiha names preceding, dull to signify their passing. The boy beside her nodded silently, little hand tightening around the exceedingly sharp steel given to him for this very purpose.

Nearly a year to the day since Mirai brought him home to them, and still the human had not spoken once. Chikao had assured her that there was nothing physically stopping him—Kaida had even less concern, and when asked, had relayed her experiences with a human kitten who had been briefly stolen by a warring clan and not spoken for months afterward. Yukito would speak when he was ready.

"When you're ready," Kana murmured, stepping aside to make space for him. The pavilion was quiet –a miracle itself considering the number of kittens in attendance– as the entire clan watched, rapt. It was the first time most of them would witness a signing; the first time the contract would be signed in their own realm.

Yukito pushed back the slightly too-large sleeve of his cool blue –and some cunning cat had managed to find a color that perfectly matched his facial markings– kimono-style shirt and didn't hesitate to split his left palm open on the blade. Two-colored eyes narrowed in concentration, he dipped a finger into the pooled blood and carefully traced the kanji of his gifted name onto the ancient scroll, and then pressed his hands together to at last add his bloodied handprint to his signature.

The blood sizzled and flared with chakra as it burned onto the scroll, and when the light faded…

Yukito's signature remained. The connection had been forged. They could all feel it.

Kana reached out to take the boy's cut hand, turning them to face the assembled crowd, and lifted it in victory.

"Our new Summoner has been accepted!"

The celebratory yowls nearly shook the earth itself.

 **/-/**

 **A/N:** So there will be more chapters like this (POV Outsider). You want to see Yukito interact with someone in particular? Request it! I'm making a list, and if I can I will certainly try to write it.

Also, the question has been asked, so: Yes, I can definitely be bribed by fan art ;3


	6. Chapter 6

Hold On (be strong)

Chapter 6

So, I had been adopted by cats. Ironic, considering the number of cats I had adopted off the streets in my last life. Or maybe it was karma? Hmm…

It was a. Strange, readjustment. I had thought for _sure_ that I would die, but even that –being alive after coming so very close to death again– wasn't what I was having the hardest time wrapping my brain around.

It was the sense of freedom.

I had, in truth, only been free from Orochimaru's confinement for maybe half a day, and I had been dying at the time. While death could've been considered a type of freedom, it wasn't the one I wanted. And before that, of course, was total and complete control over my every move and action. He controlled where I was, but _I_ had put _myself_ on lockdown, and it had initially been a hard habit to break.

There was very little restraint, here. The cats watched me, yes, but it had taken very little time –after I was sure of what I was seeing, because—talking cats! _Big_ , talking cats!– to notice that it wasn't the kind of watching that I had to be cautious of. It was baby watching, the same kind of attention that the other kittens got. Or, close enough. The big black cat with the blind right eye –'Kaida-baa-sama'– watched me a little like how Orochimaru had –keen and anticipating–, but had mostly stopped giving me those kinds of looks after I put the name they gave me onto the Summoning scroll. Because they had decided that I was good summoner material, even before I could understand a thing they said.

And I had a name now. _(Thought, for all I knew Orochimaru had given me one as well, but he never repeated it enough for me to catch.)_ A family, too: A needling big sister that was constantly fluffing up over the littlest chakra manipulation, a mother –who was apparently the clan head– that seemed to enjoy teaching me calligraphy, and a big, scarred grandmother that had recently taken to murmuring suggestions on how to train speed and strength into this quickly-growing body. Not to mention the _herd_ of other cats that inhabited the rather strange village that I really should get around to calling 'home'.

But the cats never even attempted to stop me from doing _anything_ , never made me feel too cautious to do as I wanted, whatever that may be. They supervised, helped me however they could. When they discovered that I was incapable of understanding anything they said to me, they went out of their way to _teach_. As soon as I was recovered enough from my near-death experience, I was guided into 'classes' with the other kittens, and it wasn't even awkward because most of them couldn't speak yet, either.

(Granted, most of them could _now_ , but I was…reluctant. I practiced, sometimes, when I was sure that no one could overhear, but my voice was high and awkward and a little lisp-y…)

In truth, my favorite cat among them was probably Kaida, in part because of how she treated me—she was the only one that never tried to coddle me like a child. Sometimes the keen way she watched me was unnerving, yes, and occasionally reminded me of Orochimaru…but I didn't resent Orochimaru for what he did to me, no. He left me with a rather amazing body to live in, after all. I _resented_ him for _leaving_ me to die without ever seeing the outside of his laboratories. Kaida watched me, and expected me to be skilled, be as strong as I could and _work for it_ , but there was no intent to control me in that bloody-amber eye.

Strict control of others wasn't a cat-trait. That shit was for the dogs.

Kaida also had strangely fun suggestions to make the most of my training, exhausting yet satisfying exercises. My favorite was running against the current of a chest-deep river: It required me to utilize chakra to stick to the shifting, rocky bed, while also training my strength and endurance as I fought the water's pull. It increased my running speed by leaps and bounds, until I could keep up with the other kittens, and then surpass them. I was quickly growing to anticipate the times the elder-cat felt inclined to share her insight.

Kana was different, and not just because she had a tail that was split almost three-quarters of its entire length—and that was something else completely. The cats had a ceremony, a coming-of-age sort of thing, where they decided to either keep their tail, or _cut it off_. It changed them, too; the chakra of those who bobbed their tails became denser, in some strange way, and then they started to grow to truly _unreal_ sizes. I still had problems with scaling sizes because of my childish height and the fact that a lot of the houses were built to accommodate the bob-tailed cats as well, but for the most part the tailed cats seemed…maybe two or three times the size of a housecat? Whereas Kaida could stand on her hind legs and still be looking down on a two story house.

Kana, though, treated me like a child, if a very smart one. She was the one that constantly tried to entice me into speaking, for whatever reason, but also the one who was most eager to expand my vocabulary and writing abilities. It was she that was most charmed by my growing ability to use the vine sprouting from the base of my spine to write, like how some of the cats chose to use their tails rather than fiddle with brushes.

(The thought that I was using the knockoff of a valuable bloodlimit in such a mundane way nearly sent me into hysterics, but in a way it was a necessity. Since the vines had spontaneously grown from my skin –not so coincidentally, in the exact places Orochimaru used to apply the seal tags– I had been unable to make them disappear again, so I had to learn how to control them. Weirdly, it felt a lot like suddenly gaining four new limbs, and controlling them was like learning how to write ambidextrously; it was nothing like taking control of my chakra.)

My 'aneki', Mirai, seemed to be a bit of an anomaly among the cats. Almost identical to her mother Kana –with the addition of some orange fur and a blue left eye–, but about half the size and with a tail that was just barely split at the tip. She might've been slightly smaller than the average domestic cat, small enough that I, even in my currently reduced stature, could have picked her up if I wanted. She was a runt.

She was also fiercely protective of me in ways that I couldn't wrap my head around.

The other kittens gave me a nickname, Iwazaru –that I learned much later was a jab at my persistent muteness; the name of one of the three monkeys, 'speak no evil'–, that Mirai took _great offense_ to for some reason. Her offense somehow turned into the small calico acquiring some strange nectar that, when mixed with saliva, changed into a paste-like substance…and then dumping some into the fur of _every one_ of my classmates. Rendering them all just as mute as I for an entire day.

The nickname stuck around, but was never again used judgmentally. It became an in-joke of my generation's kittens, something to laugh over.

Mirai was also my first instructor of their cat-style taijutsu, which was actually cool beyond _words_ , but I was deeply dubious that I could have managed half of what I did without whatever it was in my body that Orochimaru had altered. Some of the katas required an unreal amount of flexibility, especially in the spine, and so many of the advanced ones incorporated quadrupedal twisting motions… The calico seemed very excited with the prospect of one day taking me to visit our 'cousins' the 'ninneko' once I had improved, to test myself against their more varied taijutsu specialists.

Someday in the future, I knew they intended for me to go back to the Elemental Countries, outside the safety of their realm. I couldn't say that I was exactly excited for that day, but I wasn't dreading it either. I had some small measure of foresight, a lot of raw potential in this healthy, growing body, and an entire clan _(family)_ of summons that wanted to see me get stronger. At the very least, I would sure as fuck gain the speed and ability to _run away_ if it came to that.

/-/

"Yukito-chan?" I disengaged my hands from the sign they were folded into, chakra settling back to normal, _vital_ and a little wild. I was getting closer, though; I could _almost_ coax my chakra into the same feeling I remember from Orochimaru taking us through the wall. I _wanted_ that jutsu. "You didn't come in for lunch… Were you trying to do a jutsu?"

I turned around, unsurprised to find Kana sitting primly with her sleek, split, white-tipped tail curled over her paws, just inside the border of the clearing in the bamboo I had claimed as my own. Summons weren't normal animals—they had plentiful and distinct chakra signatures, and so far none of them had been able to fool my senses. I had _felt_ her coming my way minutes ago.

I nodded in answer, because she _had_ seen my hands folded, and I didn't have any reason to hide my activities from the cats, anyway. None of them had commented –(in my range of hearing, since I had been able to reliably understand the language)– on my self-motivated drive to work with my chakra, or expressed any concern over it. Kaida had once taken the time to describe the physical sensations that would accompany the beginnings of chakra depletion, and then the ways to either remedy it or push passed to exhaustion in the safest way possible, but that was all.

I had still not experienced depletion, but then again, I didn't know any jutsu yet. The control exercises never seemed to drain my chakra faster than it recovered.

Kana hummed. "Come, then. We will go have lunch, and I will teach you a jutsu." She waited for me to reach her side before standing. "I just want you to promise me one thing, Yuki-chan," Kana looked down at me with bloodstained-amber eyes, still taller than me when she stood on her hind legs. "When you're ready to speak, you _must_ call Mirai-chan 'aneki'. Deal?"

I nodded. Deal. No matter how much I didn't like my baby-voice, the trade-off was worth it.

/-/

Henge was a lot cooler than fanfiction made it seem.

There was a mirror in my room –the nursery, really, but I was the only kitten in Kana's house, so it was _mine_ – which made it better than outside to perfect this technique. That was the _only_ reason that I was inside when the sun was shining so warm and appealing on such a clear day (even if basking invited patchy sunburn and a stinging, sensitive eye).

The serious-looking boy in the mirror frowned back at me. I seemed to have a face meant to express disapproval, this go around. Or maybe it was just that every time I looked into a mirror I became more and more convinced that Orochimaru was a complete and utter _troll_.

I'd already been aware that I had two distinct skin tones. I had _not_ been aware –until my first look into an appropriately reflective surface, back when my hair had still been shaved down to stubble– that the white skin had been indicative of albinism, until I saw the red eye. And then, later, the large patches of white hair. I could've been fine with that –sure, genetic manipulation, weird things can happen–, except for the three bright slashes of color _also_ on my face in a rather striking configuration. The only way to make the resemblance more blatant was if the marks had been red instead of blue.

That _fucker_.

I knew Orochimaru had put those marks on me, too, because I had asked Kaida –(well, rubbed and pointed at them while trying my best to look confused)– and she explained the process of painting chakra-infused ink or pigment onto the skin and then _searing it there_ , so that it wouldn't fade or stretch like ink-and-needle tattoos. The elder-cat said it was common practice for ninja with clan marks, because the marks grew with the body without distorting.

(Outside of the marks, my physical appearance did raise a kind of…curiosity. I wasn't actually sure which option I had come up with was weirder, or less likely. That Orochimaru had mixed the two samples that I _thought_ he had, or that my traits were a fluke; one sample with a throwback in the genetic lottery to make me look more like the _non_ -Mokuton-possessing brother. I couldn't exactly say I was grateful, because I would _stand out_ (even if I did have a pretty face to go with that potential.).)

Dog-boar-ram.

A puff of chakra smoke.

The time it was a cat blinking mismatched eyes back at me in the mirror. It wasn't actually a disguise, just…me in cat form, to match the rest of my furry family. Long furred like Kaida, black and white like Kana, amber-red and blue eyes like Mirai. I twisted around to check the back of the illusion and felt a surge of satisfaction, because I got the vine this time –the only one that I didn't keep retracted as far as I could to an awkward three inches of plant matter sprouting from my flesh– and now had a proper, movable tail.

Yukito-the-cat's long, white whiskers twitched as I cleared my throat, pointed ears folding down a little. It was probably time to go surprise aneki.

/-/

Hisoki landed more gracefully than his lack of tail should have allowed, almost disappearing into the deepening shadows, only the reflective shine of his eyes betraying his position—and I knew that, too, was deliberate, because Kaida had already had to teach me the chakra-trick to conceal eye-shine. Of course Hisoki already knew how.

"Again, Yukito-kun. Try not to drop your henge this time." Ordered the ash-gray bob-tail, and barely waited the second it took me to reapply the illusion before he reengaged, streaking in low and coming up fast with sheathed claws and hard paws.

My ribs twinged as I twisted around the first barrage of strikes, feet leaving the ground in the same corkscrew dodge that my training partner was trying to teach me—that he had kicked me out of the first two times because I wasn't fast enough. I was this time, hands briefly touching grass to push myself through the follow-up flip, leaping ahead to give myself a bit of breathing room before the soot-dark cat came at me again.

Hisoki was fast, strong, and probably about the size of a fully grown man when he stood upright, meaning that the top of my head didn't even reach his belly when he moved me through the forms. And according to Kaida, he was the best cat they had to train with to get a feel for fighting against an actual human.

He was also another one of Kana's children, older than Mirai and from a different litter, and hadn't taken an immediate liking to me like many of the other cats had. He was dutiful to the wishes of the clan, though, and respected their advisement (especially once Kaida had taken him aside to speak privately).

Hisoki was to be one of my main summons, once I was old enough to be set upon the Elemental Countries. And he refused to work with me until I was up to his standards.

If anything, my successful performance of the corkscrew only made the bob-tail come at me _harder_ , and then it was a flurry of exchanged blows –one instance of me successfully lashing out with a vine, catching him by the foot, and yanking him to the ground–, before Hisoki struck hard enough to put me down for good.

It took something like a full minute to get my breath back, panting and staring dazedly up at the clear night sky, stars blotted out in patches by the massive bamboo forest that surrounded the Cat's village. My clothes were plastered to my skin with sweat, my muscles burned from hard work, and I ached in a way that meant spectacular bruises in the morning.

It was the most at peace that I had felt in _years_.

Hisoki sighed and sat down beside me; when I turned my head, I saw that he wasn't looking at me, dark eyes fixed on the sky. "You're doing better," the cat grudgingly admitted. "You still need to practice maintaining your henge even when you're hit, though. Using your vines in combat is good, but you shouldn't allow yourself to become completely reliant on them." He sighed again, longer. "Still. Not on _me_ , Yukito-kun, but I think it would be a good idea to see what happens when you channel chakra into them and hit something."

I made a quietly agreeing noise in my throat, still lying in the cooling grass. It sounded like a good idea; I had been so focused on trying to recreate Orochimaru's jutsu in my own time that I hadn't been playing with the vines as much as I could. Which seemed a little silly, now, considering I literally had _plants growing out of my skin_.

Hisoki sighed one more time and stood.

"Come on, kitten, let's get you home. I'll have Okaa-san get you a remedy for those bruises, and you can take it easy tomorrow."

When I fell behind the dark cat for the third time, too sore to keep up his pace, the bob-tail long-sufferingly latched his teeth into the back of my shirt and carried me home.

 **/-/**

 **A/N:** Yukito's quietly aging up. It won't be too long before he's let loose... What do _you_ want to see? I'm curious.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** Wow, guys, those are some awesome suggestions! I see a couple of repeats there, and I can totally see why; some of those look _really fun_ (and some of those will definitely be appearing!). Keep them coming!

 **/-/**

Hold On (be strong)

Chapter 7

Cats are not human. Cat _Summons_ are not human, either, for all that they could speak and reason and live somewhat like them. I was grateful, because generally speaking I didn't get on well with my own race, no matter how well I could fake it.

More immediately, I was grateful because a human probably would have tried to stop me: Kaida only watched, a great furry boulder stealing the largest sunbeam that broke through the bamboo cover. I could hear her purring from clear across the glade.

I was playing with my vines today, but probably not in the way Hisoki intended.

Previous practice had given me a decent amount of control over my four new 'limbs' –three, really, because I was a little cautious of using the one that sprouted from my skull for much of anything; what if someone yanked me by that in a fight? They were pretty _firmly attached_ –, and eventually some spatial awareness of where they were in relation to _me_. They didn't register physical sensation anything like skin, but seemed to tap into my chakra sense instead, and learning how much pressure to apply to pick things up was trial and error. First with sturdy objects, then breakable ones…and then on Mirai, when she volunteered. (She liked being thrown, and I could get her flying so fast she _blurred_.)

There was still a lot to test. Did they hurt to be cut? _Removed_? Did they grow back? If yes, how? What was the energy cost? How _long_ did it take? Did they grow back the same?

No time like the present. Better to find out now then later, when it might land me in real trouble.

I chose the one on my left arm, just in case.

Reaching out, _growing_ out that vine a couple feet to coil around and grip a new sprout of bamboo –dark fern-green contrasting sharply against pale yellow-green–, and it was almost like I could sense the entire _forest's_ root system, which was interesting but not the point just then. I pulled my arm back until the vine was taut, a tug at delicate skin that meant it _might_ hurt for it to be ripped out, and brought up the blade with my right hand, nicking it. Fibrous. Harder to cut than its relative thinness implied. No pain, nor _any_ sort of signal or change to the way I felt it. And, unlike a natural plant, no sap or fluid seeped out. Thankfully, no blood, either.

I raised the blade again, and brought it down as hard as I could, and although I was much stronger than a child of my old world could ever be –probably stronger than I had been as an adult, actually–, the exceedingly sharp steel only bit a half-inch deep, just about halfway through. I had to wiggle the knife to get it out again, and then the gash started _sealing shut_ until any evidence of the damage was gone, less than a minute later.

Cool.

Frustrating at the moment, though.

"Do you need help, Yukito-kun?" Kaida asked, sleepy, apparently unconcerned with what I was pretty sure counted as self-mutilation. Then again, it was a part of their culture that about half their population –herself included– cut their own tails off…

"Yes," I answered after a moment, not seeing a point in struggling when the help was offered.

Kaida heaved herself up onto four legs and cleared the space between us in only a couple of steps. Her paw was the size of my torso, her claws bigger than my entire hand and then some, but she was exceedingly careful when she hooked just one of them over my vine. A quick flare of heavy chakra, a twitch, and the vine was severed completely. "Very tough," the black bob-tail said appreciatively, not making any move to go back to her previous basking spot even though I had chosen an area mostly in the shade. It was _hot_ out, and I intended to train in the water, later.

Still no pain, but I was suddenly much less aware of the last few inches of the severed vine. Not _completely_ unaware, weirdly, but it didn't feel like a _limb_ anymore, not anything that I could control. Just a little bit of chakra. The part still attached to me was already healed over to a tapered tip, like it had never been cut at all, and grew as I was accustomed when I used it to reach for the 'dead' end.

When I held it in my hands –cool, organic-smooth plant matter, light as if it were hollow– it was bizarrely reminiscent of holding a length of cut hair, alien, a sense of disbelief— _this didn't come from me, right?_

Would it rot? Disintegrate? Dry out? What about the little bit of chakra that lingered in it—would it fade? What if I cut it _after_ channeling chakra into it? _Could_ it even be cut, then?

"That's quite the thinking face you have there, grandson." Kaida said approvingly, smiling with gleaming white fangs when I tipped my head back to peer at her. "Let's see if you can come up with something before this evening to surprise Hisoki. I want to _watch_."

/-/

I put off cutting my hair until I literally _could not_ stand it anymore, and it only took so long because of how _incredibly_ stubborn I was about the subject, even to myself.

My hair had been _long_ , before, as I had stopped letting anyone cut it right around the time I was thirteen, and deemed old enough to make my own image choices. It had been almost ridiculously easy to manage, straight and fine and easy to pull back when it got in the way.

Not so, this time. It _defied gravity_ up until a certain length, and then it became a goddamn _mane_ that _still tried to stand up_.

If this was how _his_ hair behaved, I didn't blame Tobirama for keeping it short! If he'd have let it get long, it probably would have looked just as wild as Madara's!

(Kana wasn't very thrilled with the mess of brown and white hair littering my room. It took weeks to get it all up.)

/-/

"You're getting too big to train in this part of the river, Yuki-chan," Mirai opined from where she sat, far enough back from the bank to be safe from any but the most enthusiastic splashing. She was right, even if she was being a know it all; this stretch of river used to reach midway up my chest, but now only just touched my hipbones. I was growing.

I was also strangely excited for the next exercise Kaida would have for me.

But I wasn't at the river for that, today. I still couldn't get my chakra to feel quite right enough to succeed at Orochimaru's nifty jutsu—and I was still _set_ on learning that invaluable technique. I wanted to be _great_ at it, to eventually be able to do it without handsigns, with barely a _thought_. It might not be foolproof, but I had a feeling that being able to slip through the earth itself would go a long way towards getting me out of some otherwise sticky situations.

(It would also be a lot harder to trap me ever again, but that was just incidental. Really.)

My chakra control, as far as I could tell, was still godawful. I didn't know if it was an age thing –because this body was still very much that of a child in their single-digits– or something else, but the point stood. I still blew myself off the bamboo-trees –(they weren't trees, but they were just too _huge_ to call them 'stalks')– when I didn't pay close enough attention, and I had already spent _hours_ today trying with no obvious improvements.

Water was easier.

Doing things with the water didn't even feel like training—it felt like _fun_. It felt like having superpowers, like every good thing I could have wanted when I realized that I had some sort of _power_ inside myself.

And yeah, maybe it was strange that water came easier when I literally had _vines_ sprouting from my body, but I wasn't in the mood to think myself in circles. It probably made sense somehow, but the only way I could find out was to someday, somehow, sneak back into Orochimaru's lab for his files (if they hadn't already been discovered)—or ask the Snake Sannin himself.

Yeahhh, not happening. I valued my freedom and bodily autonomy too much, thanks.

With considerably more ease than anything else, I pushed my chakra out into the water, isolating a section and then climbing up on top of it as if it were solid. Confident that the river wouldn't carry me away so long as I parted the current, I sat cross-legged on the cool, crystal-clear water and dipped my cupped hands in.

It condensed into a neat sphere and stayed like that even after I uncurled my fingers, rippling slightly when I urged the water inside to spin, faster, faster, until I held a tiny waterspout in the palm of my hand, growing taller and thinner and white—and when I cut my chakra it exploded into a rainbow of mist that slowly fell back to the earth.

Mirai made a noise somewhere between 'ooh, pretty' and a grumpy complaint at getting unexpectedly wet, and I sensed her move another dozen feet away.

I very carefully did not smirk, knowing that she could still see my face.

I _was_ a younger brother, after all.

(The calico-runt also had some ability to sense chakra, but I doubted it was as keen as mine, and based on observation I _knew_ she didn't have my range.

 _(I should test it)_.)

Water stuck to my vines just as easily as to my skin, and I strained my control by growing the ones on my arms out _long_ , collecting fist-sized spheres of water every few inches like beads on a string and _keeping them there_. It was harder once I began to twine them together, and even more so when I tested my most recent discovery and made them _split_. It was challenging, like writing with one hand while simultaneously drawing with the other, but a fun sort of frustrating.

(Mirai made a most satisfying yowl when my stealthy tail-vine looped around behind her and dropped its own carried orb directly onto her furry head.

After that, water practice turned into dodge practice through the forest as she started spitting fireballs, and then an all out water-war when she couldn't keep me from getting back to the river. It took _hours_ for the steam to fade.)

/-/

For a while, probably the first month or so after being adopted by the Cat Clan, when I was still trying to make sense of freedom and big, talking, cats, part of me wondered where they were getting the clothes they gave me to wear.

I had figured out pretty quickly that I was the only human living there, even without the blatant way that the kittens stared at me –obviously fascinated– cluing me in.

They were nice clothes, too, even if they were a far cry from the easy comfort of worn-soft t-shirts and jeans. They also felt a little…dated, from what small bits I could recall about the way the young ninja in the series dressed. Kimono-style shirts –both short and long sleeved– that needed to be belted shut, and loose-legged pants that usually fell midway down my shins. Yukata, sometimes, but only ever when I wasn't training with my vines, because I didn't intend to cut a hole for the one at my tailbone.

And then the Cats celebrated a festival, and everyone –even _Kaida_ – came dressed in kimono, patterns from simple solid colors to falling leaves and artfully flowing streams, to a full, detailed depiction of a long-bodied red dragon circling a golden flame.

Then it made sense. The Cats weren't human, but they were _people_ ; they made their own clothes.

Somehow, it meant more that they would give them to me, too.

/-/

"Where are we going?" I asked, probably thirty minutes after Kaida crouched before me and told me to climb on. I was very careful not to yank on the long, thick fur where I sat high on her neck, my chin resting on one of the scars crossing the top of her head. The morning was golden, bright where the sun's first rays were caught and held by the fog lingering in the bamboo, still a little cool. It might have been well into autumn, but it was somewhat hard to tell—the seasons were mild.

"We, grandson, are going to the lake, as you have grown too tall for the river." The Cat's equivalent of a boss summon answered, voice perfectly sensible as her pace swiftly ate up the ground.

I chewed on my question for a minute, still not fond of talking even if I wasn't quite so put-off by my child-voice anymore. "The lake wouldn't have a current to fight," I stated, leaving it hanging, but not actually asking the question.

"It does not," she confirmed, and I didn't need to see her face to know that she was smiling with her saber-like fangs showing. I stayed quiet this time, and she eventually laughed and explained. "You will dive to the bottom of the lake and utilize your vines to drag large rocks behind you. If your control of water is good enough, you should discover some way to allow yourself to breathe. Otherwise, you will have to return to the surface for air."

I mulled that over in silence as Kaida continued onward, confident in the winding, unmarked path she took. We were so far from the village that, for the first time since I had been brought there, I couldn't sense the keen-sharp thrum the gathered cats gave off. Only Kaida, dense-heavy-hot and ever-more saturated.

The bamboo forest broke abruptly into open space, and the only way to describe the sight before me was 'awe-inspiring'. The lake had to have been at least a mile in diameter, perfectly round like an impact crater, barely distorted at the edges where the river fed into it and flowed out again. The water retained its glasslike clarity around the edges, steadily darkening towards the center as it became deeper and deeper—the center was nearly as dark as the night sky. Pale, sand-colored rocks littered the bank, from fist-sized chunks to boulders larger than Hisoki.

And I hadn't noticed it before, but so far away from the village…I almost had an _awareness_ of the water. A subtle, easily overlooked 'ping' on my chakra sense.

Kaida didn't move to immediately dump me in the lake, quiet as she seemed to contemplate the long shadow she cast over the shimmering water, the slow drift of morning fog. I saw no need to push her—I liked her company, and silence was a large part of that.

"You're growing up as strong as I could have hoped, grandson. Stronger, even." I twisted my fingers in her fur, unsure, and remained quiet. Kaida didn't seem to expect any comment on my part. "Did you know that, historically, our Clan demands one of the smallest chakra costs to summon?" I shook my head, aware that she could feel the movement with how I was draped on her. "It's because when we accept a Summoner, they become a part of our family, and we take care of our family."

At some point my hands had become fists, and I forcefully relaxed them, releasing the night-dark fur that I had practically been tearing out. Kaida continued on as if she hadn't noticed – _(she had)_ –, voice slow as she tracked the flight of a small bird skimming over the water's smooth surface.

"Our first Summoner, the first whose chakra called to us, was named Uchiha Ryoto. He was an adult in the eyes of his clan, but little more than a kitten in ours. He needed allies, desperately, but wars between rival clans meant he likely wouldn't have survived the years he needed to grow his chakra reserves to accommodate other Clan's powerful Summons. Certainly not a Boss!" Kaida laughed, or something like it, a hoarse cackle. "We were perfect for him, because even _our_ kittens knew taijutsu, and summoning as few as three to a battlefield meant chaos and sliced hamstrings for his foes."

The bob-tail's entire body rocked with the force of her sigh. Her voice softened.

"That was a long time ago. Ryoto lived well beyond the life expectancy for his time, and sired many kittens of his own. Since then, we have treated the Uchiha as _ours_ ; our natures aligned to theirs, our skills adapted to work around and compliment their style. We had at least three Summoners every generation."

Kaida fell silent, her chakra fading out like leeching ink around the edges. It was what she felt like to me _before_ , dim and half-there. _(Depressed.)_ I reached up and tentatively pet the back of one large ear, unsure but invested in the story that she was telling me, that she _wanted_ to tell me. The solid form I was perched upon thrummed with a deep, broken purr.

"Bad luck struck, and our Summoners were killed on missions for their Village before any more of their clan could sign. The last…my partner…died nearly twenty years ago. He wanted his son to sign with us, but the boy was still too young at the time. I only saw the kitten a few times, but he had such _promise_." Kaida sounded wistful, felt like a gray landscape edged in pale gold.

"What was his name? The kitten?" I asked, pulling myself fully onto Kaida's head so that I could see her eye.

"Uchiha Obito, he was called."

Holy _shit_.

 **/-/**

 **A/N:** As always, I look forward to what you guys are thinking :3 Also, look! A name drop! *grin*


	8. Chapter 8

Hold On (be strong)

Chapter 8

"Is this really necessary, Okaa-san?" Kana sighed, her voice that distinct tone that meant she didn't expect anything to come from an argument, but still _had_ to say something. I looked at her through a two-color fall of hair –I needed to take the blade to it again soon– but didn't raise my head from where it was directed at my outstretched right arm. Kaida _did_ briefly raise her head, pausing in the rather painful process of licking the top layers of skin off my forearm with firm passes of her rasping tongue.

Chikao, sitting unobtrusively behind me with his special bowl of ink and thin brush, sighed nearly inaudibly.

"I think it is _very_ necessary, _Kana-sama_ ," Kaida said dryly. "Hisoki-kun is satisfied with his progress, and that means Yukito-kun is ready to train with the ninneko. The ninneko, who live in the _human_ realm. We can send him close to their fortress, but if for some reason he encounters ninja, he needs to be able to summon help as quickly as possible. This is the best way."

"Okaa-san, you intend to link the summoning seal to yourself! Does Yuki-chan have the chakra to sustain that?" Kana was losing some of her usual poise, the fur at the base of her black and white tail fluffing up.

"Kana-chan, take a moment and _feel_ your son's chakra. We can't battle together yet, but he is strong enough to sustain me through an escape and reverse-summon."

Kana sort of deflated, my sense of her chakra edging back away from the sharp edge of fear. "Of course, kaa-san. I'm sorry, I thought…"

Kaida hummed and turned her great head away from the Clan Head, and I winced when her rough tongue resumed its work on my arm; pinpricks of blood were beginning to seep out of the skin. "My grandson won't go against ninja until I'm sure he has a chance. Of course I wouldn't risk his life with something as asinine as making him pull on more chakra than he has."

"That looks good, Kaida-san," Chikao stated into the somewhat awkward silence left between mother and daughter, the herbal scent clinging to his long cream fur tickling my nose when he came around to peer at the raw skin. "I just need some of your blood in the ink and we can finish this."

Kaida obligingly bled into the thick ink, puncturing a pad with one of her own claws and watching intently as the much smaller split-tail mixed it with his fine-tipped brush. The jade-eyed cat that I was much more accustomed to seeing play doctor to my training injuries settled before me, eye level with the way I was sitting cross-legged on a thin mat.

He didn't even have to tell me to sit still when one of his paws gripped onto my wrist; Chikao-sensei's touch was familiar, his chakra serene and almost…pastel. It was easy to relax and let him twist and manipulate my arm as he drew the seal, cool ink soothing on inflamed-hot skin. The seal twisted around my entire forearm, swirls and symbols interlocking into the vague suggestion of feline silhouettes; long-bodied cats like flowing smoke, the impression of a forked tail, the flash of sharp fangs, keen eyes. The threat of claws.

At last, Chikao set his brush aside and nodded to Kaida, who flicked her ear as her chakra _flared_.

I sucked in a sharp breath as my arm _burned_ , and when it stopped the dark tattoo on my skin no longer shone with the gleam of wet ink, well and truly a part of me now.

A guarantee of instant backup—just add blood.

Kana must have seen something on my face, because she stopped looking so downtrodden, regaining that serene composure I was used to seeing. She even complimented Chikao on his beautiful brushwork. Chikao –who I was sure had to be at least as old as Kaida, who had actively fought during the time of the Warring Clans, pre-Founding– visibly preened under the praise as he smothered my raw arm in an ointment and wrapped it in clean linen.

Kaida was grinning when I looked over, and I smiled back. Grandmother was looking forward to the day when she would get to really _fight_ again.

/-/

"Do the signs one more time, Yukito-kun," Kana said, and I couldn't help rolling my eyes as I flashed quickly through the five hand signs. _Again_. For the fifth time in as many minutes. Off to the side, Mirai laughed. "I'm just making sure, kitten, bear with it."

"He _knows_ , daughter, delaying won't make this any easier," Kaida opined, sotto voice. A wave of titters went around the gathered group of cats. I knew them all by sight if not name; most of them were older cats, ones with tails more than half split, ones that were taller than humans without having to even stand upright. Hisoki and Mirai were wildly out of place in this group.

Kana sighed and rolled her bloody-amber eyes skyward, expression wry when she looked back at me. "Alright, Yukito-kun. We'll sent you as close as we can, but as soon as you land, summon Hisoki-kun; he knows the way and will make sure you get in the fortress safely. If you encounter any ninja, use your tattoo. Summon Mirai-chan to come home."

"I know," I reminded her, trying for gentle but pretty much failing because this was the _forth time_.

"Okay, okay," Kana sighed, stepping forward, and then all the older cats _lit up_ —

I shook my head, disoriented for a long second as the wash of chakra swept away and dissolved around me, adjusting to the sudden lack of presences when I had been surrounded just a moment before.

I was alone.

I could feel a large body of water, not too far away. Somehow, even the _air_ felt different.

I lifted my hand to the back of my neck and swiped my thumb over the little vine hidden in my hair, neatly slitting the digit open on the sharp edge of a thorn that was there and just as quickly gone.

My hands flashed through the signs: Boar-dog-bird-monkey-ram. _(I thought: Hisoki; teacher, brother, respect, rival, protector.)_

The dark scrawl of the summoning spread out from my bloody hand on the ground, and Hisoki appeared in a thick plume of white smoke—I felt my chakra ebb and surge from the unfamiliar draw. Like the brief giddiness that could accompany vertigo, a swoop low in the stomach from an abrupt drop.

Hisoki was watching me, pewter colored eyes almost lost in the sooty darkness of his fur. He looked strange in the dappled shadows cast by the coniferous trees we stood under; I was so used to seeing him in the green-tinged shadows of the bamboo forest.

"How are you feeling Yukito-kun?" I nodded firmly at him, not trusting my voice just then. It would probably shake. "Wear your henge until we're inside and I tell you otherwise."

I nodded again and flashed through the three signs, applying my cat-form transformation. I had started to think of it as 'Iwazaru', mostly because of an idea I'd had after listening to Kaida's story of Uchiha Ryoto, the first Cat Summoner, and the way he had called on multiple cats at once. After hearing it, both Kaida and Hisoki thought that it was a valid plan, and the elder bob-tail had sworn to spread the reasoning around to the rest of the Clan; she seemed thrilled with the deception, even if nothing ever actually came of it.

We walked together in amiable silence, Hisoki's chakra familiar –elusive and cutting-sharp, heavy like the air before a storm– as we moved towards the sense of big-deep-cold water. It was midday, no apparent time difference between here and the Cat's realm, but the scenery was unlike anything I'd seen in _years_ , since before Orochimaru. At one point, this would've been more familiar to me than bamboo: Plentiful evergreens with flaky bark, tough grass and bare patches of dry dirt, protruding stones like the earth's bones on display.

I had been shown a map—admittedly, at least twenty years out of date, but. Technically, I was in Fire Country again, the very north-north-west reaches, near a border. Close to a mostly-abandoned city called Sora-ku, but I wouldn't go there until the cats though I could hold my own against shinobi. Apparently it was some sort of ninja supplier? Hisoki didn't want to elaborate, and I didn't care enough to prod for more. I'd know in time.

I felt the gathering of chakra long before the trees broke and the ninneko's fortress came into view, a sturdy castle sitting in the center of a murky-dark lake, surrounded by tall, tree-covered mountains. There must have been hundreds of cats inside, but even from a distance I couldn't have mistaken them as my Summon family. They seemed fainter, somehow, even if they were still obviously not normal animals.

There were two cats standing upright at the end of the bridge, blocking the entrance. They were mirror images of one another, mostly white fur, one with a right brown ear, the other with a brown left; both held spears taller than they were and had armor draped over their torsos.

I shot a sidelong look at Hisoki, wondering if this was normal for ninneko. From a couple years of observation, it appeared that the Summons usually saved wearing clothes for special occasions, like ceremonies and festivals. Today, however, Hisoki was dressed as I usually was, in a pale green long sleeved kimono top and calf-length loose-legged gray pants. Most suspect was the short sword strapped to his back—I _knew_ most of the summons preferred taijutsu or pure chakra manipulation.

I was curious, of course, but wouldn't ask unless I couldn't find out the answer for myself.

"Nyaa, is that Hisoki-san? Who's that with you?" Left-cat asked… _not_ in the language my Clan had taught me? But I understood anyway..?

What the shit?

"My younger brother, and we're expected." Hisoki answered shortly, talking to them the same way, and he was…meowing? Literally meowing? And my brain had some sort of auto-translate apparently..?

 _(Maybe it was another side-effect of signing the Contract, like the eye-shine and better night vision that had cropped up a couple of years ago.)_

"Are you?" Right-cat drawled skeptically, laying his ears back and eyeing me in an unfriendly manner.

"We are," Hisoki drawled back, on of his paws coming up to rest on the hilt of his sword. "If you keep me from my meeting with Nekomata-sama, then you're going to see firsthand all the tricks my brother's learned from me."

Left-cat stepped aside, paws up and spear tucked against his side. "Alright, alright! Go on in, Hisoki-san, kitten-kun. You know where to go." Right-cat huffed, but remained silent otherwise, though his dark eyes remained narrowed.

Hisoki glanced back at me, tipping an ear in a gesture I knew to mean 'keep close', and we passed through the gate. The courtyard just inside the entrance was absolutely _bustling_ with cats of every color and feature, all but a few walking upright and wearing clothing or armor, all but what were clearly kittens standing at my height—if not a little taller.

The ninneko were _clearly_ a different race than the Summon Clan cats. Even the couple of cats I saw with short tails didn't feel any different from their fellows, didn't have the heaviness to their chakra that Hisoki did. None of the others had the slightest of a fork to their tails, even the elders with their graying muzzles dozing together in the sun. Sometimes I caught the shine of metal tied around the heads of the armor-wearing cats, and more often leather pouches strapped to their bodies that must have contained steel weapons. Ninja cats indeed.

For all the curious glances, no one tried to delay us as Hisoki went up, up, more stairs and passed a number of establishments that made me reclassify this place as less of a castle and more of a _city_. If I wasn't very much mistaken, Hisoki had looked longingly at a place that _had_ to have been a rather classy bar and lounge. The smell of smoke and searing meat wafting from a nearby door made my mouth water—it had been _ages_ since I had tasted beef, sustained like my family was, on fish, birds, and a wide range of vegetables.

We at last came to a large, uncluttered room that only had a single staircase leading up to the ceiling. The general quietness of the space belied the large number of cats cluttered into groups in the dim room, playing card and dice games or just sleeping up against the walls. A bulky, round-faced orange cat with squinting eyes stood to block the stairs as we approached –the only one who didn't take one look at Hisoki and quickly turn away– and in a movement I was now painfully familiar with, my brother twisted and kicked the interloper in the side of the head. No one in the room moved to help the orange male –shorter than Hisoki by a full head, but who must have outweighed him twice over– when he hit the far wall and slumped over, and we ascended the last set of stairs, unbothered.

I may have though the new room was empty, had I not been able to sense chakra. Unlike much of the rest of the fortress, the new room was practically _all_ windows, even if they were all shuttered, the space lit by two neat lines of candles leading to a raised, screened-off platform. The brightest presence in the entire castle sat behind the screen, a dark, unmoving shadow that wasn't Kaida's size, but still _big_.

Something gleamed behind the screen, and Hisoki gestured for me to stay behind him, not even halfway across the room when he stopped. The slightly longer fur on the back of his neck was just starting to bristle.

"Nekomata-sama," the bob-tail called, back to speaking the language I was more used to hearing. "It's Hisoki, son of Clan Head Kana and grandson of Kaida, with my brother Yukito, sometimes known as Iwazaru—our newest Summoner. We've come to train with our cousins."

The shape of the shadow on the platform was suddenly more distinct, backlit by a fresh flame. The silhouetted cat had large, tufted ears, and a long body—'Nekomata', in my opinion, looked an awful lot like a weasel. His tail was visibly forked, split almost halfway down, swaying slowly like a pendulum.

"I received you mother's missive, Hisoki. Can't say I expected her to follow through and actually send him to me." The deep voice dropped to a menacing growl, and I reflexively fell into a ready stance, prepared to pull on my chakra—reaching for the water collected in a nearby tower. "A human is a human, no matter how good their transformation is, and I _don't like humans_." The shadows around the room seemed to darken, writhe.

"You _swore_ ," Hisoki hissed, halfway drawing his sword from its sheath; the blade was as dark as his fur. "If you go back on your word—"

Nekomata scoffed, the flame behind his screen flickering. "I keep my word, but I don't have to go easy on him. You, _boy_. You're here to train? Fine." The ninja-cat boss paused deliberately. "You can train. One week. If you can deceive all the other cats with your transformation, _while you train among them_ , for one week, then you are welcome back to my fortress. You won't even have to disguise yourself if you succeed."

Hisoki was growling, all his fur standing on end. "If he's discovered before you make an announcement the others will attempt to _kill him_."

Nekomata made a hacking sound that I belatedly identified as a laugh. "Then you'd better hope he's as good as you think he is, Hisoki. You're welcome to stay, of course. If your _brother_ can keep you here that long, that is."

The flame behind the boss extinguished, clearly a dismissal. Hisoki made a 'hiff' noise, and I reached out and batted at his sleeve, rolling my eyes at him when I had his attention. Seriously, what was he worried about? _He_ had pretty much cemented my ability to hold my henge no matter what, and it wasn't like I had to _speak_ to communicate.

My older siblings were so _weird_ sometimes.

If I could go _years_ pretending not to have a personality, a week as a real cat wouldn't be hard at all.

 **/-/**

 **A/N:** I think next chapter will be another POV Outsider...And I think it'll be Hisoki this time.

Also, to those interested, there's a poll regarding CtC on my profile.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N:** Because I have no restraint when it comes to this fic, apparently... Here's another chapter. Hisoki was fun to write, and very cooperative.

 **/-/**

Hold On (be strong)

Chapter 9

When Mirai came back –Mirai, the only one they could rally the chakra to send, as impulsive as she was softhearted– with a human-kitten in tow, Hisoki doubted.

The boy was small, young, and a step away from leaving the mortal coil. And then, he was mute, unable to understand _his own language_ , and yes, his chakra was almost shockingly strong, but it wasn't the _right nature_. The boy was water and earth, so strongly aligned he would likely never be able to learn another, and Mirai had _known better_ , _known_ that they were fire and wind more than anything. How could they work with a Summoner so counter to their abilities?

Hisoki doubted.

'Yukito', Mirai named him. A _blessing_ , a _treasure_.

Hisoki doubted, but he held his tongue, and the boy signed.

Hisoki doubted, but perhaps a little less—the Clan had enough power to send more than Mirai, again, and he could go back to honing his skills with a sword against the ninneko. He didn't think he would work with this Summoner –Hisoki was meant to cover a genjutsu-type, strong and quick and silent as a shadow– but perhaps Yukito would live long enough to find another human to sign. In the fullness of time, he might even be steered into seeking out the Uchiha clan, so that their generations of synchronicity wouldn't have to be forgotten.

For a while, Hisoki only observed. The human didn't speak – _much_ ; Mirai yowled anytime she could that he'd finally called her aneki–, but he listened. Yukito was one who watched, too, between his attempts to reign in the wildness of his own chakra and trying over and _over_ again to master whatever jutsu he kept locked silently in his fluffy little head. It was _obvious_ he watched, because how else was it that he could communicate so well through the movements of his henge? The flick of an ear, the twitch of whiskers, the sharp lash of a tail—a jutsu that quickly evolved from an illusionary chakra shell to the completed form, a solid transformation.

Hisoki still doubted, even when Honorable Kaida-baa-sama took him aside and asked if he – _he_ – would consent to eventually be called upon as Yukito's main combat summon. And even though Hisoki continued to doubt, he didn't reject the possibility completely, because it was his grandmother asking –one of the few Cats of another nature, more earth than fire– and Kaida had more years and wisdom than he did. Kaida had seen _true_ battle, wars both before and after their previous Summoners swore themselves to a Village, and she called the human 'grandson' the same way she referred to him.

Hisoki doubted less, but he still didn't go easy on the human, didn't give him any slack as he brought him up to his demanding standards. Sometimes, it was a cat that faced off against him –his mother's coloring, his sister's eyes, but his grandmother's sly expressions–, and he pushed until the transformation was so good he only felt fur, not skin, under his strikes. He pushed until not even the pain of a broken bone, nor the loss of consciousness, would make the human lose hold of his jutsu.

An ability like that, the ability to _persevere_ , would only help later on. Hisoki was tasked with keeping Yukito alive and able to stand his ground against whatever a ninja could throw at him, and he _would_.

Other times it was a human that stood across from him—two-color skin, two-color hair, two-color eyes. Two-nature chakra. Even then he moved like a cat—talked like one, too, with the way his eyes narrowed, moved, the flick of the green-green vine he kept as a tail. He was freer with his chakra when he wasn't hiding it in his cat-henge, more likely to try to trip or catch Hisoki with his vines – _thorny_ vines, once he was skilled enough for Hisoki to unsheathe his claws–, almost always reaching for the water, turning it into high-pressure jets or swamping waves. Yukito's sense for hidden, underground water sources was bordering on preternatural.

Together they learned how to turn his vines into armor, a skill that didn't come as naturally to the human. With practice, Yukito was eventually able to wrap his limbs in them –first his arms, because of where his most dexterous vines grew, but also his throat and entire torso when Hisoki otherwise refused to spar until it was mastered–, and even Hisoki's wind-coated claws had trouble cutting them when the human learned to charge them with earth-natured chakra.

No matter how hard Hisoki pushed, Yukito persevered.

It was harder to hold onto his doubts in the face of that.

/-/

Hisoki was on edge the entire week he and Yukito stayed in Nekomata's fortress. Every minute he expected the worst; that Nekomata would go back on his word, that Yukito would run out of chakra and the tether holding him to his Summoner would snap, that one of the ninneko would somehow see through the henge.

Nothing happened. Yukito persevered.

Hisoki made sure to keep him close the entire time, because Yukito could only speak the human language even if he could understand their cousins' just fine. Even that turned out to barely be necessary. Hisoki wasn't much of an actor, but it only took a couple instances of pointedly rolling his eyes and calling the human-in-disguise 'Iwazaru' before he was prompted to tell the story of how his perpetually silent little brother acquired the nickname.

The ninneko turned it into a kind of game after that, trying to find a way to make Yukito speak, but they never turned any suspicion his way. To them, he was just a large Summon-kitten, come to train in the arts that most of his Clan had little interest in—the same way they treated Hisoki when he first came to them, wanting to learn to wield a sword.

Yukito finally got the brandish the little kaiken he'd been gifted at his signing as more than a tool to cut his hair, and took to shuriken throwing with enthusiasm.

.

"It's a control exercise, see?" chimed in one of the group that Yukito sat amongst. As far away as he was –'too old' for that group–, Hisoki couldn't see which of the young cats was actually speaking. There was a tinkle of small bells. "I'm not so good yet, but Hina-chan is! See, the longer the string is, the harder it is to keep the bell quiet. Hina-chan can keep hers quiet even when they drag the ground!"

"Aa, Nori-chan, stop! I've just been doing it longer!" There was a pause, then a quiet titter from someone else in the group. A cream-colored, long-eared adolescent wearing washed-out red stepped into the small empty space surrounding Yukito's black and white form, the bright blue of his clothing almost a beacon. "Here, you try now, Iwazaru-kun." Hisoki tensed a little when Hina leaned into Yukito's side to attach a tiny silver bell on a clip to the long fur around his neck.

Nothing came of it—Yukito's transformation continued to hold.

Yukito tilted his head and then gave an experimental shake. The bell jingled. Another wave of laughter went around the group of young cats. Yukito's flattened his ears and shook again, and this time the bell was silent. Some of the cats cheered, and then Hina held out her forelimbs, revealing a veritable _web_ of strings and bells hanging from her, none of which sounded as she moved. Yukito's eyes narrowed into an expression Hisoki was becoming painfully familiar with.

 _Challenge accepted._

.

Hisoki had been gone for _one minute_.

Itsuo, the sleek, dark cat that had trained alongside him in the sword arts –and his favored companion whenever he visited the fortress–, was laughing so hard he was on the floor under the table. The sound had already chased away all the other cats that had been seated in the nearby booths.

Yukito, across from him, was completely ignoring the beef he had been so eager to taste, eyes glazed over and chin flat on the tabletop. His long, white whiskers twitched against the dark surface, and occasionally he chattered, the same way a kitten first laying eyes on a bird would. He didn't even seem aware of Hisoki's presence, and considering his abilities as a sensor…

"Itsuo, what did you _do_?"

Itsuo continued to cackle unhelpfully until Hisoki sharply swatted his ear, then the lout spent the next minute whining until Hisoki lifted his paw again threateningly.

"I didn't – _ha_ – Hisoki, look, he was _curious_ , I just let him have a little taste," the blue-eyed cat trailed off into unhelpful laughter, but pointed at the dark red cocktail sitting innocently before him, halfway to empty. Hisoki snatched it up and gave a tentative sniff before recoiling, staring down at his Summoner with horrified fascination. Essence of catnip.

The human (kitten?) was stoned out of his mind.

Hisoki gave his friend one last kick before he went over to gather up his younger brother, signing tolerantly when Yukito latched onto him tightly and buried his nose into his chest. It didn't take much to get him moving, even if the human-in-disguise adamantly refused to loosen his grip, claws pricking through both clothing and thick fur, and Hisoki kept one paw on his brother's back. Just to steer him more easily.

It still took Hisoki a few minutes to register it, already most of the way back to the shared room they had been given for the duration of their visit. The slight vibration under his paw.

Yukito was purring.

.

The courtyard was full to overflowing, so many cats gathered that some had to stand atop the walls, and Yukito stood beside Hisoki at the center. If he hadn't been so familiar with his Summoner's habits, he probably wouldn't have realized that the subtle shift in his distorted, almost Summon-shaped chakra meant he was reaching out for the nearest source of water.

It was the end of the week, and Hisoki couldn't blame Yukito for his distrust. Nekomata hadn't made the best first impression, and he wasn't exactly known for being _gracious_. For the boss-cat's sake, Hisoki hoped he kept his word; the fortress was in the middle of a _lake_. It would probably exhaust him, but Yukito could flood the courtyard and soak all the cats inside.

Far above them, Nekomata stepped out onto his balcony, a blur of white further obscured by a genjutsu. His voice sounded clearly, immediately silencing all chatter.

"I'm sure that you've all noticed that for the past week, I have hosted two of our cousins from the Summon Clan," Nekomata paused, just long enough for some of the more suspicious ninneko to _wonder_. Hisoki subtly shifted closer to Yukito, peripherally aware that his brother was wearing his new pouch of shuriken strapped to his leg. "This was a test. From this day forward, Yukito of the Cats is granted free passage into the fortress, the same as is granted to the rest of his Clan." Nekomata sounded begrudging, but so long as he kept his word, Hisoki didn't care. Yukito had successfully secured a safe place in the human realm.

Before too many of the cats could vocalize their confusion, Nekomata spoke again.

"The condition was that Yukito had to deceive the entire fortress for one week. No deception was necessary. You are all formally introduced to the human-shaped Summoner of the Cats."

Proving that he did in fact have a flair of showmanship to make the rest of the family proud, Yukito chose that moment to release his transformation, and more than one nearby cat leapt away in surprise as the plume of chakra smoke faded, exposing the true feel of the human's chakra for the first time. Off somewhere to his left, Itsuo made a choking noise.

Hisoki might have cracked half a smile, the barest flash of fang that Yukito mirrored beside him.

It was harder to doubt him, now. His Summoner might not be a genjutsu type, but Hisoki could work with that.

/-/

Hisoki went back to mostly observing after they returned home from Nekomata's fortress. He still trained with Yukito, because his taijutsu could only get better, but the human had thrown himself back into his chakra work with renewed fervor. He wore the bells _constantly_.

And then, one day, both Yukito and Mirai emerged from the bamboo, _completely_ covered in dirt.

The jutsu their Summoner had been working on for so long was to move through the earth. Mirai thought that it would be _even better_ if he practiced carrying _her_ with him while he did.

Hisoki couldn't say he was surprised to hear that the jutsu almost immediately evolved to include passing through the bamboo, as well. Then, the walls of houses stopped being an obstacle for Yukito.

At least he stopped tracking dirt everywhere as he got better at it. Mirai's complaining had been getting _annoying_ : It was her own fault for volunteering after the first time, when the dirt had been ground so deeply that she'd had to dive in the river before she could groom without risking a mouthful of mud.

Sparring after that was, at first, an exercise in patience. Then, an interesting challenge. Discounting his new habit of ambushing from beneath the ground, usually with only his vines spread like a web in the grass, Yukito was almost as fast traveling beneath the earth as he was above it. He seemed determined to be able to pass through any surface at a moment's notice, dropping hand signs from the jutsu at an alarming rate as he launched himself _off_ of some bamboo trunks and _through_ others.

Even losing a couple of milk teeth and breaking his shoulder from mistiming the technique –slamming hard into a trunk he meant to dive through in evasion training– didn't dissuade him. Chikao-sensei had to send Yukito to Kaida-baa-sama just to keep him out of trouble while he healed, entertained with stories of the techniques Kaida had witnessed fighting in the time of the Warring Clans.

Unfortunately, a temporary ban from strenuous physical activity didn't stop their Summoner from continuing to play with his chakra.

.

Hisoki felt the explosion of familiar wild chakra before he heard Mirai's first frantic scream for help, almost cutting himself on the blade he was sharpening as he leapt up and _ran_. He didn't even falter when Honorable Obaa-sama overtook him, just jumped onto her back instead, joined by other members of the Clan near enough to feel the fur-raising sensation of seething, untamed chakra.

He nearly flew off into the mess when Kaida slammed to an abrupt, chakra-assisted stop, Mirai frantically pacing before a literal _wall_ of thorny vines, her fur already matting with blood in places.

"What happened?" the battle-scarred warrior demanded, and Hisoki tuned out Mirai's stuttering of 'I don't know' and 'hand signs' and 'new jutsu', testing the vines with the tip of his sword as he tried to gauge the distance he was from Yukito's favored glade, undoubtedly where he had been practicing. The vines – _Yukito's_ vines– were so saturated in his chakra that Hisoki couldn't actually sense the human.

"Enough. Hisoki, stay behind me until I call you." Kaida turned her head enough to fix the half dozen tense cats behind her with a single, ominously flickering red eye. Her chakra was building, pressure like lava under the earth's crust. "Someone send Chikao-sensei to the Clan Head's house, make sure Kana-sama is waiting."

Then her fur flared with fire-natured chakra, and the nearest vines crumbled to ash under the sudden heat—those that didn't twisted like snakes and attempted to close the gap. Kaida-baa-sama, Hisoki abruptly remembered, was linked to Yukito by her own blood, and could undoubtedly feel him despite the confusing tangle of plants laced with their Summoner's chakra hindering the rest of them.

He followed on her heels as she burned her way farther in, Mirai slinking in at his side, distantly aware of still more cats following, stopping at intervals and breathing out fire to keep the path open behind them. The tangle was so thick that it blocked the light, hid the bamboo Hisoki knew to be there, turned his home-ground strange. Finally, his grandmother stopped, long black fur tipped in orange flame, smoldering like charcoal and breathing smoke.

"Here, Hisoki. Cut, but carefully, he's just ahead," And at last Hisoki sheathed his dark blade, edging his claws in wind chakra and slicing though his brother's vines as if it were just another day, just another spar. The furrows the wicked thorns carved into his paws would heal, so they weren't worth thinking about.

He found a limp hand, first, white fingertips almost transparent, the darker skin ashen. Hisoki didn't rush, didn't allow himself to become sloppy and inadvertently cut skin. Mirai whined where she stood, but never paused in breathing out licks of flame to keep the reaching vines from swallowing him. His eyes stung from the hot smoke billowing from his grandmother's mouth.

Hisoki cut. His fur singed.

He didn't doubt.

.

Later, after Yukito had been pulled from his deathtrap of a jutsu; after Kaida had scooped him up in her jaws like a kitten; after they had all retreated and the vines swallowed up the path behind them. After he had been taken home. After Chikao-sensei bridged a chakra transfer between their Clan Head and only Summoner to bring him out of the worst, most dangerous part of chakra exhaustion.

After.

It was dark in the room, and Yukito was asleep in his bed of pillows and blankets, curled around Mirai and clutching her like he was afraid she would leave. (She wouldn't, not even to eat, barely long enough to clean the worst of the blood from her fur.) Hisoki hadn't left yet, either, even though he hadn't lived under his mother's roof in years. Kaida and Kana weren't far, just down the hall in the Head's meeting room; Chikao, in the next room in case of the worst—the only one besides Mirai that could sleep.

Yukito had woken, briefly, just as they were finishing the transfer, just long enough to slur nonsensically about 'slipping' and 'feeling the forest', pale and smiling wide enough to show off the sharp fang growing in one of the gaps. He'd been sleeping ever since—would probably stay that way for at least another day, Chikao told them.

So it surprised Hisoki when Yukito cracked one eye open, pupil catching the faint light and shining gold, most of his face still buried in Mirai's short fur. When the human didn't immediately sleep again, Hisoki stood and padded over on silent paws, hesitating only briefly before joining his siblings in the soft nest, though he didn't lie down just yet. Yukito turned his head enough to watch his face, attentive even while exhausted, dark circles under his eyes and skin still too pale.

"You almost killed yourself," Hisoki murmured quietly, noting the wince that narrowed Yukito's eyes.

"Sorry," he sighed, almost asleep again and clearly fighting it.

"You're not allowed to die before you find someone else to sign, otouto. I've worked too hard on you to waste it like that. Then we'll have to send Mirai out again, and she can only get that lucky _once_."

Yukito was staring up at him with wide eyes, and Hisoki belatedly realized that it was the first time he had acknowledged their relationship _to_ Yukito.

"I won't," the boy promised, voice a little strange, and with a hiccupping sort of noise he began to purr. He looked startled about it, probably didn't even remember doing it before during his nip-haze.

"Hm," Hisoki hummed and lay down, resting his chin on Yukito's chest so he didn't have to look at his brother's face, a paw over his legs so he wouldn't try something stupid like _moving_. "Go to sleep, Yukito."

He fell asleep to the quiet vibration of his brother's purr, not loud enough to drown out the slow, steady beat of his heart.

So long as Yukito lived, Hisoki wouldn't doubt.

 **/-/**

 **A/N:** *deep breath* Okay, guys, this is it. I could start the next chapter any number of ways, and I'm not _actually_ sure how I want to yet. But... We're almost there. Next chapter, _maybe_ the one after if a scene ambushes me again, and Yukito's gonna be out there in the Elemental Countries. It's gonna happen, guys. There's gonna be ninja.

As always, I'd like to hear what you think, and also what you might like to see, because it just might get included!


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** Ugh, I struggled with this chapter. Here, take it; it feels transitory to me, but still necessary.

 **/-/**

Hold On (be strong)

Chapter 10

"You're still so _young_ , Yuki-chan," Kana fretted as I adjusted the thin leather straps of my sandals, carefully not looking at her. She only got worse when she knew I was paying attention. "Kaa-san, how old is he? Yuki-chan can't be old enough to leave yet!"

Kaida turned her head from where she was watching Mirai rifle through the tough, waterproof bag that would hold my essentials, fixing an amused glance at the Clan Head before switching her attention to me. I stared back at the towering bob-tail, more than a little curious myself; I knew I had been living with the Summons for years, and saw my own reflection frequently enough, but it wasn't actually much use for keeping track of my age. Disregarding the fact that I hadn't had much skill with faces _before_ , the nonstop training had quickly stripped my body of baby-fat (probably too early, honestly), and it had turned my face lean, sharp, and a doubtlessly older looking than it should have been.

Kaida hummed, crouching down to bring her huge head closer to our level. In the background, Hisoki hauled Mirai out of the pack by her scruff and placed a small cooking pot inside, ignoring his sister's yowls and flailing with the resigned ease of long practice.

"Well, it's been almost eight years since Mirai-chan brought him home," the battle cat mused, half-closing her blind left eye and causing the pale, bald scars to pull interestingly. "So I would say our Yukito-kun is ten or eleven. Calm down, daughter, he's practically an adult by ninja standards."

Kana didn't look reassured, ears down and deeply split tail audibly tapping the ground. I hid my expression by subtly ducking my chin, consequently casting most of my face into shadow with the help of my nifty new hat –sugegasa–, meant to protect me from sun and rain both.

I…didn't think Kaida was exactly right. At least, not according to what I remembered about the Rookie 9's generation in Konoha. I was _pretty sure_ that most of that group was around 12 or 13 before they actually became genin. Then again, Kaida was _old_ , and it was really only the most recent generations that tried to keep eight year olds off the battlefield. By that logic, eleven years old practically _was_ adulthood.

Ten or eleven. That was…interesting, I guess. Something to think about, anyway. I had to have been at least a couple years old when the Kyuubi thing happened, so, tentatively… The future Rookie 9 might be anywhere between, what, seven to nine years old? Maybe? The only way to be sure was to actually go and see for myself, but that was… a little reckless. Was I _that_ curious?

…Yes. Yes, I was, and my family had been encouraging that curiosity for _years_.

Even if that sometimes led to things like losing control of a new jutsu and almost being _eaten by it_.

So, I was more careful trying to develop new techniques, but hey, learning experience. I got a couple new ways to use my 'Mokuton' from that accident, so the chakra exhaustion –no matter how awful at the time– had _absolutely_ been worth it.

"You worry too much, kaa-sama. Yukito is well trained and can call on us whenever he needs." Hisoki stated, carrying Mirai over and dropping her into my arms, also setting my pack down beside me. Mirai hissed at the dark gray bob-tail, but wordlessly climbed up onto my shoulder and draped herself around my neck like a scarf.

"Yeah, kaa-chan, you don't need to worry! Yuki-chan is fast, too, and he'll have me with him!" I flattened by hand over Mirai's tri-colored face so she would stop shouting in my ear and moved until I stood just before the Clan Head. Okaa-san. Her amber-red eyes were large and soft with worry, her chakra hot like a desert wind, shadowed with creeping fingers of smoke. I was finally tall enough to look down on her, now.

"I'll visit, and send Mirai back to let you know how I'm doing," I said softly, telling her what I knew she needed to hear, even if her worrying made me uncomfortable. I liked Kana, but I couldn't understand her the way I could Kaida and Hisoki. Mirai escaped my understanding sometimes, too, but I didn't have the option of avoiding _her_ like I could the ever-busy Kana—the calico stuck to me like a stubborn burr.

"Oh, Yuki-chan," Kana lamented, looking about ready to pull me down and start grooming my hair. I took a hurried step back, and even Mirai conspicuously launched herself from my shoulder, for once in agreement with me; Kana's fussy grooming was something to be avoided at all costs. The piebald's expression turned faintly wry. "Fine, fine. Remember what Chikao-sensei said—Summon Kin-chan if you get hurt, and she can bring you home if it's too bad."

I nodded and shouldered my bag, bouncing in place to settle it and then tying the straps across my chest that would keep it from flapping about when I ran. I was more excited than nervous about leaving, even knowing some of what was waiting for me out there. _Who_ was out there. But I could run, now. I was fast. I could move through the earth almost as easily as I could leap above it, and then there were the _trees_.

And if all else failed, I had a nifty tattoo to summon a giant battle cat. One that could literally be _on fire_.

 _(I could reverse-summon back home.)_

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Kaida said, and –almost invisible in the shadow she cast– Hisoki nodded to me. Somehow, it wouldn't surprise me if I found an extra brace or two of shuriken sneakily hidden in my bag. "I'm not getting any younger here, Kana."

The Clan Head rolled her eyes. "As you command, kaa-chama."

Kaida's spectacular grimace was the last thing I saw before the wash of chakra picked me up and swept me away.

/-/

"I thought you'd do something different." Mirai complained from a nearby tree branch, her slightly-forked tail swaying below her like a pendulum. I spared her a side-eye and flexed my chakra, sliding through a different tree, just to quash the impulse to take control of hers and make the branch she sat upon fling her off. The sensation of flowing into the tree should have been claustrophobic— _might_ have been, if my chakra sense hadn't exploded outward as soon as I entered the trunk.

It was even more intense than 'feeling' the Cat's bamboo forest. Like…freaking Avatar, Pandora weirdness. Like I'd mind-melded with the entire forest. The trees had roots, and where the roots touched so did my chakra, and suddenly I could feel them _all_. Also, while I'd had some ability to twist the bamboo, it was nothing on what I could shape the trees to do from the inside.

A little incredulous, a lot amused—in my past life I never could have pictured myself as a nature spirit. Maybe a cave spirit (what would a cave spirit do, anyway?).

"Otouto, come _on_ ," Mirai whined, voice muffled and…echoing, presence touching down lightly on a branch of the tree I inhabited. I rustled the leaves. " _Yuki_! Come on, there's so much other stuff we can do! Explore! Find humans! Go visit our cousins— _anything_. Just come out of the tree, _please_."

I pushed myself halfway out of the tree, still encased from the hips down in the strange warm-living-vital embrace of the trunk, and sighed in the calico's general direction. She narrowed her big, two-colored eyes at me, and I raised an eyebrow back at her, crossing my arms and probably looking pretty weird hanging backwards halfway out of the gnarled trunk.

"I needed to practice," I told her, not apologizing. "Trees are different than bamboo." She grimaced, ears briefly twitching back.

"Yeah, fine, it would be bad if you broke another bone already." Mirai conceded grudgingly. "You're good now, though, right?"

I nodded in agreement, but just as I was about to leave the tree entirely, something brushed the edges of my expanded senses. Tiny, faint pinpricks, like stars obscured by the thinnest of clouds. Were they so faint because of distance, or was the chakra within them really that weak?

"Yuki?"

"People, I think," I slid the rest of the way out of the tree, turning in the direction I'd sensed them before my range contracted again. "At least ten, maybe more." Mirai leapt down onto my shoulder, and I internally swore to thank Hisoki for his foresight in acquiring for me tops made of more resilient material, or I would've already been scratched to hell, no matter how careful my sister-runt tried to be with her claws. At least the wide hat kept her from wanting to jump on my head, as well.

"Oh, oh, do you want to go see? Maybe there's a ninja!" I shrugged skeptically, but started walking in that direction anyway. Hisoki and I had debated certain logistics of my travels –specifically, keeping my vines wound up under my clothing, like armor–, but if I reached out and touched the trees with them instead, I could get an echo of that expanded sense. It was slightly disorienting, like looking at two overlapping pictures showing the same image, but in completely different colors.

"Do you know where kaa-san sent us?" I asked absently, once we were close enough that I could feel the group without weird Mokuton-assisted augmentation; they seemed to be moving generally south-east, and I corrected my course more eastward to intercept. The geography was somewhat similar to what I'd seen around the ninneko fortress; mountainous with more pine trees than anything else, shallow creeks that bisected the steep, rocky ground.

"Not really," Mirai answered. "I haven't been around much, but this looks like it's north of Nekomata's castle. It might be the Land of Canyons." She made a long, low noise in her throat, and I felt her tail thump against my shoulder blade. "Or maybe it's Lightning? C'mon, otouto, run! I want to see the humans!"

I sighed and checked that the silk strap under my chin was tight – _blue_ , because Kana liked to match my clothes to the marks on my face, and I didn't care enough to complain–, and obligingly leapt into a sprint. I didn't have the experience to run on the tree limbs yet, but that would be the next thing on my agenda.

"If there _are_ ninja," I warned Mirai lowly. "And they attack me because I came up running, I'm throwing _you_ at them."

.

They weren't ninja, as far as I could tell. The… _smallness_ , of their presences didn't grow with the closed distance, so unless they could hide somehow…

It looked like a caravan; a dozen people walking alongside four covered wagons pulled by heavy-bodied oxen, travel stained and wearing practical, earth-toned clothing. They were walking on what appeared to be a well-used road, wide and wheel-rutted, signs that it had been up-kept recently in the freshly-cut tree limbs thrown into the bushes. I'd found the road while on my intercept course and made the more cautious decision to wait and see—it seemed less aggressive than just running up on them, and less likely result in a fireball in my face from a startled ninja.

…I hadn't even tried to talk to them yet and it was already awkward as hell.

It was the first time in years that I'd seen a human face besides my own, and I was a little grateful that the shadows cast by my hat did a lot to mask my _blatant staring_. Those were some interesting hair colors, the sort that could only be found from a bottle in my last life.

The caravan trundled passed my place, off to the side and half leaning against a tree, but the older man who had previously been at the lead lingered behind. Not so subtly, so did a girl just creeping into teen-hood, a shared resemblance in the deep brown shade of their skin, the light pastel color of their hair.

"You going to cause us any trouble, boy?" the man asked tonelessly, thick knuckled hands curled into loose fists by his side. He kept a deliberate distance from me, which was…curious. I shook my head. The wrinkles around his eyes grew deeper—the spark of his little chakra fizzled like pins-and-needles. Irritation, maybe? "I don't want anything to do with rogue ninja. If you're on the run you'd best be on your way."

"Oji-san," the girl chastised, but I was still blinking incredulously, eyebrows up. He thought I was a missing-nin? At _eleven_? (And I was _not happy_ that I was suddenly the shortest one again, after _finally_ growing taller than all the split-tail Cats.) Was I supposed to be offended? Missing-nin were supposed to be unanimously reviled—he just insulted me, didn't he?

Just for that, I may have decided to be a little shit.

"I'm wandering," I told him peaceably, casually reaching up and brushing my hand against Mirai's cheek—the predetermined sign for her to hide that she was actually a Summon, and _very_ capable of speech. "My family sent me out to bring someone home to join our Clan. Baa-chan has someone in mind, but Okaa-sama wants me to be happy with them before we commit," Mirai quivered with held in laughter, and I continued to smile a vaguely pleasant 'retail; hello valued customer' smile at him until the man twitched and walked away.

Why _not_ make it sound like I was looking for a spouse?

The girl stood and stared after her uncle(?) as he caught up with the caravan, then turned a wide, white grin on me. _That_ was the look of a coconspirator.

"I'm Umeko, but _you_ can call me Ume-chan. C'mon, you can walk with me. I want to see if we can make oji-san get so angry he loses his voice. I haven't seen that in _months_."

.

In the couple of weeks that I trailed after the caravan –leaving them during the day to keep up my training and become familiar with the new terrain– I learned quite a few things, some more valuable than others. One; I still didn't like dealing with groups of people. Two; having a cute cat on my shoulder somehow made me more approachable. Three; my physical capabilities were _monstrous_ compared to normal, non-ninja people. Four; most adult non-ninja were uncomfortable around ninja-children (or maybe that was just me?). Five; thing four was only helped a little when I (almost accidentally) thwarted a bandit attack when the caravan skirted the Rice Paddies/Fire Country border.

(Really, almost accidentally. They attacked after everyone else had bedded down for the night, just as I was dismissing Mirai to find a tree to sleep beneath. They were _slow_ , and it was over in less than a minute, five unconscious men that I hadn't even needed jutsu to take down, left for Asao to deal with. (He left them tied up on the side of the road, to whatever fate found them.))

"Asao-oji-san says ninja cause more problems for a caravan than they prevent," Umeko said doubtfully, deep purple eyes catching the firelight as she leaned forward to give the soup in the cooking pot another stir. I made an inquiring noise in my throat, seated beside her with my hat off, trying to pick a stubborn, prickly seed out of my hair.

"I think he's just being dumb," the thirteen year old said with a sigh. "He likes hiring ninja from Iwa or Kumo, but our most profitable trade route is to Tea Country, through Fire. _Everyone_ knows Konoha ninja don't like either of them, but oji-san is stubborn, and he lost _two wagons_ a couple years ago to a Kumo/Konoha fight." She sat back with a huff, glancing at the larger fire that the rest of the caravan surrounded.

"Bandits," I pointed out, flicking the freed seed into the fire with a little _snap_ and running my fingers through my hair again, checking one last time. If I wasn't diligent about it, things got _lost_ in there. It was well past dark, and Mirai was already back home for the night.

"I _know_ ," Umeko said and snorted inelegantly, shaking her head and fiddling with one of the pretty glass beads strung into her pale, pastel pink hair. "We wouldn't have this problem if he hired a Kusa ninja, or Taki. They're closer, too, but he won't listen to me."

Umeko liked to talk, I had found out pretty quickly, and she didn't require more from me than a glance or the occasional word. She was the youngest member of the caravan by something like a decade, taken in by her uncle when her mother –her uncle's sister– died, and her father walked out on her. She was being trained to one day take over the caravan. The known –but pointedly not talked about– fact that I was some sort of unaffiliated ninja hadn't even given her pause, while the rest of them kept their distance. If I was another kind of person, I might have been offended at their blatant avoidance, but Umeko was more than enough interaction for me.

She also _thanked me_ for my contributions to the cooking pot every night. And, after the first couple hours of blatant starting at my uncommon coloring, it became a complete non-issue for her, unremarkable.

"You'll know better for when you take over," I shrugged, reaching over to gather up our bowls and handing them over. "Adults are stupid. You have to _show_ them a better way when they won't listen."

She snorted again and dished out the soup, not talking again until we were both done and she'd offered what remained to the others. I knew that they only _tolerated_ me tagging along for the fact that I gave them some of the edible mushrooms and wild vegetables that I gathered, too. Buying equanimity with food wasn't unfamiliar to me, but I thought they could do a better job of hiding their dislike. Blatant hostility didn't engender any favors, after all.

The girl returned from the rest of the group with a map in her hand and a pout on her lips. She spread the thick paper out beside me, ignoring my raised eyebrows, and pointed by the flickering light of the fire. "That's where we are," she trailed one dark finger a tiny bit south, to the outer edge of a dotted-line circle. "That's about where the Konoha ninja will ask to see our travel papers—" and her finger moved just a bit farther south-east "—and that's where we're supposed to stop tomorrow night."

Oh. Well, time flew.

Fire Country was a big place; according to Asao, the ninja didn't patrol the actual borders most of the time, but there _was_ another border line within the country that you needed identification to get through. Asao's company had the appropriate papers, with a roster listing every member of the caravan already approved, and good for another year.

I –having very likely been created in a lab, and then taken away and raised by Cat Summons– had no papers, and wasn't sure if I wanted to know just then if I was brazen enough to openly pass a border check.

Umeko looked at me sideways for a second, then tapped the map again, tracing a thick blue line drawn through Fire and down to Tea. "It'll take us another couple weeks to get there, and then we stay in Tea for a month." She moved her finger back along the same line, then followed a split-off green one going to the west, ignoring the faded red line starting along Fire's east coast. "Then we go through River, and up to Storms, where we'll stay another few weeks if the Ame ninja allow us to trade in their Country, then through Bird Country and back to Stone, where we live."

I took a moment to make sure I had the path memorized—and it _did_ look like the Cat's map was a little outdated, but not excessively. "Okay..?"

The young teenager crossed her arms over her meager chest and rolled her eyes. " _Boys_ , by the kami. Yukito-kun, we take the same route every year, and probably will until I can talk oji-san out of it. _Find me_ again when you can, okay? _Somehow_ you're less dumb than a lot of the adults, even if you are a boy."

Was that a compliment or an insult?

"Alright," I said, deciding it was probably better to just not acknowledge her last sentence. Umeko deflated in obvious relief, some of the stubborn bravado leaving her. The little glow of her chakra fizzled like a sparkler. "I guess someone has to protect your uncle from his own stupidity."

.

I didn't leave my hidey-hole when I sensed Umeko's caravan pack up and leave in the morning, hidden in the same sort of burrow I created every night and filled in every morning. Mirai didn't particularly care for my favored sleeping arrangements while away from home, which was one of the reasons why I sent her back every night. That, and Kana would probably try to summon herself to my side if I didn't send word back often enough.

Every night I chose an appropriately large tree and sunk into the earth just beneath it –where the roots were the largest–, then _pushed_ , making a hollow just slightly larger than my body. I never went too deeply underground to sleep, but the logistics of _how_ exactly I was getting oxygen was still a _fucking mystery_ to me. I suspected that somehow, ' _trees_ ' was the answer.

(Every other time I moved through the earth, it took a bit of finicky control to make a continuous air pocket, and sometimes it was still easier to hold my breath and visit the surface occasionally.)

I kept my vines wrapped around the tree's roots while I slept, and it was peaceful to do so in the dark hours of night, blind from my eyes but not my senses. The only downside was inevitably rising at first light, when the forest woke with the sun.

Seriously, I felt like a nature spirit.

Well after the caravan had gone, even from my expanded senses, I collapsed my burrow and phased out of the tree.

Mirai appeared in a small puff of smoke, looking around curiously while I licked at my slit thumb, encouraging it to heal.

"Where are the people, Yuki-chan?"

"They were going to run into Konoha-nin today," Mirai lashed her tail, and I talked over her rising objection. " _And_ I want to be sneaky." The calico-runt huffed.

"You spend too much time with Hisoki, otouto."

I rolled my eyes at the old complaint and quickly applied the henge that made me appear as Iwazaru the Cat. Mirai perked up again, uttering a questioning "Oh?"

It was something I had been thinking about on and off for years, because some morbid, not-so-little part of me wanted to know how far I got—

"I want to see where you found me, aneki."

I wasn't _that_ far from Konohagakure.

 **/-/**

 **A/N:** Wish me luck for the next chapter! You guessed it; guaranteed ninja interaction.

Now, who wants to guess who it'll be? If you were paying attention, I gave you a little bit of the timeline ;3

Also, thank you to all the lovely, amazing people who leave me reviews; they really spur on my inspiration! (You guys have really good ideas, y'know? Food for thought c:)


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N:** Thank you, as always, my lovely reviewers! It's your comments that get me inspired when I get stuck, and I _really_ got stuck this time! Hope you like the chapter; it's a little longer than my average for this story, but I didn't want to cut the last scene from you guys just to keep it even ;3

 **/-/**

Hold On (be strong)

Chapter 11

It didn't happen often anymore, but when I'd first learned the henge and took on my Cat-shape, I would occasionally get hit with disorienting moments of 'wait, what?'. Sometimes from the feel of repurposed muscles pulling on the large, mobile ears atop my head, or the very _immediate_ sensitivity of the whiskers on my face, but never more frequently than when I dropped down into a quadrupedal stance for whatever reason.

Those moments were passé, now. After all, I'd adjusted alright to suddenly being in a body so much _smaller_ than I was used to living in; what was one more shape? A shape that _I_ had created?

The stance felt more natural under the henge, yes, but I used cat-style taijutsu regardless of my shape, and that obviously resulted in my hands coming in contact with the ground fairly frequently—an unexpected boon, with how my Mokuton liked to work on plants. And it was faster to run on four paws as Iwazaru, even if it meant Mirai had to use her claws to cling onto the dark green fabric of my yukata because she couldn't keep up with me, murmuring directions into my ear.

The trees changed the farther south we went, growing taller and leafier and just… _more_. I hadn't even touched them with my vines, but every time my paws landed on a branch –no matter how briefly– I had a flicker-echo of that expanded sense. Snapshot pulses like echolocation. These trees _wanted_ to talk—it would probably be pretty amazing to sleep beneath one.

(Maybe I should ask Mirai to take a seedling home for me? I could plant it in the glade at the very center of what Hisoki had dubbed my 'deathtrap'.)

Then, I began to sense the ninja, and the difference between them and the people in Umeko's caravan was unmistakable. They _shone_ , and in a completely different way than my Clan or the ninneko. I barely remembered what a ninja felt like, and then it was only of Orochimaru's menace and the terror-pain tainted sensations of his victims.

I wasn't particularly worried about them detecting me. For one, none of the moving clusters –patrols? Was patrolling a normal thing for ninja?– ever made to intercept me, so I tentatively decided that I was probably outside their sensory range. For another, while I wore Iwazaru's shape, my chakra was a lot closer to feeling like a Summon than a human—at least, according to the ninneko. I figured it wouldn't hurt to gamble on the chance that any ninja that detected me would think I was a Summon.

"We're getting close, I think," Mirai said, and instead of leaping to the next branch I dropped to the ground a good twenty feet below, standing upright and looking around curiously as the calico clawed her way up to my shoulder. I couldn't honestly say any of it seemed familiar…but I hadn't exactly had much opportunity to look around, with the condition I had been in.

Although…

There, on the edges of my un-augmented senses, like the glow of the sun just below the horizon, was what could only have been a huge _mass_ of chakra presences. It wasn't even that I could distinguish individuals, just that there were so many, so close together, that it bled into the air like the pale glow of a distant wildfire. There was no doubt in my mind that what I was sensing was in fact Konohagakure. It really only raised more questions, because I definitely hadn't felt _that_ before the Cats spirited me away.

Then, there was the more subtle feel of a long, steady, cool-not-cold water source, and almost without thought I found myself moving towards it. Lo and behold, there was a river, deeper than I was tall and with a current strong enough to create eddies at the irregularities along the bank. I still couldn't say I recognized it—all I had anymore was the blurred sense-memory of digging my fingers into mud, the thick smell of blood and rotting, waterlogged grass. And stars; maybe I would have recognized this place after dark.

Mirai yowled a low protest when I leapt directly to the center of the river, sending up a fine spray of refreshingly cool water even while the chakra in my paws kept me from falling through; despite the speed of the current, I caught a brief reflection in the water, the contrast of long black and white fur. The main body of the river didn't seem to flow directly from the Village's direction, but close enough; a drainage system had to connect to it somehow, for me to have washed up on its bank. I just had to find it.

"Yu-, ah, Iwazaru, do you have to be _on_ the water?" Mirai whined, having migrated to the center of my back, where she clung like a furry loaf of bread. The smirk that grew on my face was completely involuntary. The calico didn't mind me carrying her when I traveled through the earth, but water was another matter completely: she had tolerated the practice it took for me to learn how to create an air-bubble for her to breathe with, but hated that I couldn't keep her _dry_.

Almost none of the Cats tolerated water well, especially not the fire natured ones like Mirai. Hisoki, being wind natured, didn't mind the water as much, but as he was still larger than I was, carrying him through the water brought about a completely different set of complications.

"I'll be diving as soon as I find what I'm looking for," I said airily, and was completely unsurprised when she disappeared from my back in a puff of white smoke, taking my travel-bag with her. That was fine. I wasn't even sure I wanted an audience if I found my way back into Orochimaru's lab. Granted, the Cats had never asked me about where I had come from, but I didn't know if it was because they thought _I_ didn't know, or they just didn't care. I wasn't curious enough to ask, yet. Maybe one day.

Still.

I walked against the current, my eyes turned down and nose as close to the water as I could manage without going cross-eyed, chakra spread out into the body of the river. I felt the way it moved around the debris at the bottom, the tree roots intruding from the banks, what made the water slow and what made it form little whirlpools. I couldn't call it sensing, especially compared to what I got from tapping into the trees, but doing this gave me something like a map of obstacles to work with. Mostly, I'd only ever used it during night-training at the lake with Kaida, lugging boulders around the lakebed on moonless nights, surrounded on all sides by pressure and black water.

(If nothing else, that was one _hell_ of a way to inspire the development of _another_ 'second sight', not to mention a way to _breathe_.)

I paused and turned my head to scrutinize a cage-like tangle of thick roots emerging from a steep portion of the bank, the huge tree they belonged to casting shade over the river—my curiosity piqued by the stream of slightly warmer water flowing from them. It was one of _those_ trees, and it only took the touch of one black and white paw, a slight push of chakra, for the moss-speckled roots to creak farther apart, revealing a dark hole beneath. It would've been a tight fit for a fully grown adult human, but it was more than wide enough for me to get into.

More than large enough for a toddler, even with floats attached, to come out of.

It was good enough for me; I cut the chakra from my paws and dove.

.

The drain had turned from mud to stone less than a dozen feet inside, and I had to heavily abuse my ability to control water currents just to keep from being washed back out the way I came; somehow, the stone resisted chakra-sticking. I was also more grateful than ever for Kaida's thorough training, because it was black as pitch, and there was no air above my head for a good fifteen minutes of stubborn swimming. I much preferred the technique of 'grabbing' air from the surface, but I _could_ filter oxygen from water if pressed—it took a _lot_ of concentration, though. And if I messed up, I got water in my lungs, which was _awful_ and hard to get rid of if I couldn't surface immediately.

(Ambush potential, though. I liked being sneaky too much to pass up learning a technique like that just because it _hurt_ sometimes.)

As soon as I felt the void of air above me, I stuck my nose out and took a deep, silent breath. Gritty wet stone smell, and it was still darker than a moonless night. When I cautiously lifted the rest of my head above the water, my ears were filled with the weird, echoing slosh of moving, contained water. I could _feel_ both my eyes and pupils dilate, trying to see anything and failing. More jarring than the dark was how absolutely _alone_ I felt; at some point, my ability to sense the growing pressure of Konoha's ninja had been quashed, and I couldn't even say when. Just that I was alone in an echoing stone tube –wide enough now that I could walk on fours instead of having to swim like an otter–, and the stale smell of the air was making the soaked fur on the back of my neck stand on end.

I kept on. I only wanted to do this once, and like hell was I going to let a _smell_ chase me away.

Eventually, incredulously, I saw light. _Orange_ light.

It was dim, flickering, but above my head…the shape of an irregular oval, the silhouette of bent bars. I braced my legs against the current and tilted my head, twitching an ear up to listen, but there was nothing but the sound of moving water, the faint droning buzz of a dying lightbulb. I didn't…it didn't _feel_ like there was anyone up there. Probably. Had it always felt like this, _not_ sensing every living thing around me? I couldn't remember.

I shifted and got my hind legs under me, slowly, cautiously standing until I could poke my head up through the hole…nothing. Well. Not _nothing_. I could see the remnants of the items I had scavenged from the attached room, all spread out across the floor. The pile of blankets lumped together, abandoned in the corner. I squeezed my upper body passed the bars and hauled myself the rest of the way into what had once been _my_ cell, then paused, dripping noisily.

This was…a little unreal, honestly. Not exactly unpleasant, but being here made me feel distinctly…uneasy. I definitely _should not_ have been here.

I used one of the blankets as a towel, wringing out a considerable amount of water from my long fur and sodden yukata before I went into the small, doctor's office type room; the solid metal door was still wide open, exactly how I had left it. I didn't even try the light, knowing it had mostly burned out even before I escaped, but my eyes had changed since signing the Contract, and I could see well enough with what little light the orange bulb cast. The open cabinet, thoroughly scavenged by my hand. The metal base of the sink, dented with a number of tiny baby handprints. The filing cabinet in the corner—inert. _Open_.

I froze where I stood, down to my tail, and cautiously edged closer, vines sprouting thorns under my henge. That cabinet had always buzzed with volatile chakra, _always_ , and I remembered that because unlike the door or seal-tags, the power of it had never seemed to wane over time. It had been _closed_ when I escaped, deemed too much of a risk to mess around with.

And now it was _empty_. But who had done it? There were too many possibilities.

Damn it all. I had really wanted to know what had been in there, too. For years, it had been a nagging, distant curiosity, if only because of what I suspected it may contain. Why else would Orochimaru keep a highly protected case of papers in the same place he kept an isolated experiment? It was either really important information, or it had to do with _me_. Maybe what he had done, or what he had been _trying_ to do.

Rather than dwell on the disappointment, I turned my attention to the empty stretch of wall that lead to the main lab. While I was here _anyway_ …

.

Moving through solid stone was actually really, _really_ _difficult_. I shouldn't have even been surprised. Having actually tried to walk through hip-deep mud before, I could safely say that moving through solid stone was harder.

The main lab was also pitch black, and I didn't remember where the light switches were—if this place even _had_ power. (Unlikely.) It still smelled, very faintly, of death, which only made my brain insist more adamantly that I was standing in a crypt. I _knew_ that already. I had seen a lot of people die here; I had _felt_ a lot of people die here. How many? I had counted once, right? Maybe I had stopped counting.

Light. I needed a light.

Blindly, I felt around under the clinging material of my yukata for the pouch strapped to my thigh until I found the firestarter Umeko had given me, tucked amongst my shuriken. I couldn't have appreciated the gift more, because no matter how hard they tried, the Clan still hadn't managed to teach me the smallest spark of a fire technique. After the flint came the tightly-wrapped bundle of oil-soaked fuel, and—

The small fire flared to life, a sad little pile against the wall that would burn for maybe ten minutes; even if I found something, I wouldn't feed it anything obtained in _Orochimaru's_ lab. That was just asking to be poisoned.

The place looked ransacked, even beyond damage that must have come from jutsu usage, cabinets thrown open and tables overturned. There weren't any bodies. There weren't even any _bloodstains_ , not even ones I remember coloring the ground before.

I skulked around the room silently, casting strange, flickering shadows in a place I had never seen lit in anything but steady, clinically white light. It was…weird. And unpleasantly similar to a past-life experience; coming back to a house I lived my earliest years in, a decade later. I was a lot smaller, the last time I was here.

I hadn't been alone, then, though. I was, now. I was trapped, then. I'm not, now.

There was a door. Out? I had never seen it opened before, had I?

My paw made contact with the door and it _flared_ , a seal exploding bright and vicious against both my eyes and restrained senses, spreading out to cover the walls at lightning speed. I reacted completely on instinct, leaping back towards the dying fire and forcing my way back through the wall and into the other lab, then my cell and _down_.

I could still feel the seal, a bright red emergency flare on a dark road, and I urged the water to carry me faster. Shit, I really should have expected something like that. My heart pounded loud in my ears, even louder than it should have been, submerged once more.

The trip out was much faster, working with the current, and I felt it when my senses bloomed back to usual, the fire of Konohagakure at my tail. Orange light shined bright through the glassy veil of water over my eyes, so different from the dying light of the cell's bulb—a literal light at the end of the tunnel.

I twisted sharply and briefly surfaced for air when I was ejected into the main body of the river, swimming back just enough to grasp a root and nudge them back to their previous shielding cage. It took seconds, and then I was diving again, my only desire to get _away_.

I couldn't sense anyone chasing me, but my body was flush with adrenaline, my limbs feeling jittery and too-light. If I'd had to stand right now, I knew without a doubt that I would be shaking. _Damn_ , but did I hate being startled like that!

I twisted in the water and kicked off a thick root in frustration fuelled strength, squinting my eyes against the sudden increase in pressure. That could have gone so much better: I hadn't even _got_ anything out of it for the effort. Only the knowledge that _someone_ had been in that secret room, _someone_ had Orochimaru's files.

It probably wasn't even safe to sneak in that way again, with the attention I must have drawn to Orochimaru's lab. I had left the fire _right there_ ; unless they were chronically stupid, someone was going to check it out, find my old cell, find the escape route. _Damnit_.

(It could have been worse. I could have _actually_ been caught. I could have been _ambushed_ , and then where would I be, hm?)

I couldn't have been free from the drain for more than ten minutes when I felt it—barely. It was hardly even a ping on my chakra sense, something _fast_ , and I twisted inhumanly to avoid swimming straight into the line of sharp steel breaking the water before me. Well, shit, that was a ninja, then. Guess I hadn't managed a clean getaway.

My hind legs touched the silt-y bottom of the river and I leapt, aimed towards the bank opposite from the ninja, and even before the water cleared my eyes my left paw was tucked full of shuriken, my right pressed to the thick branch I crouched upon. The ninja was also standing on a tree, and it was almost like looking at him from three different angles without even using my eyes—and then I actually _did_ see him with my eyes.

"Ha, let me guess. You're a catfish, right?"

Hisoki's training meant the first thing I focused on was the kunai held in the ninja's right hand –the same projectiles that had driven me from the river–, then to the forehead protector—the Leaf, and really, anything else would've only made me wonder. His hair was a riotous mess of short black curls, pretty face, maybe in the end of his teen years and—

Well, I should have given more credence to Kaida's stories, because Sharingan eyes really _did_ glow. Then I had another sharp spike of adrenaline course though me because, shit, could he see that I was under a henge? One of the older Cats would have mentioned that, surely?

Then—oh hell, _Uchiha_. They were _still alive_ , because that definitely wasn't Itachi or 'Tobi'… _grinning_ at me? Wait, did he make a pun at me? What the hell?

The Uchiha rocked on his heels, as unbothered by his position on a tree branch as a Leaf ninja should be, but despite his lighthearted air he kept his weapon in hand, his chakra smoldering hot just beneath his skin. His eyes continued to glow eerily in the light of the setting sun—three tomoe in each eye. I never really had liked holding eye contact unless I was making a point, but Sharingan eyes? Nope, not happening. I chose to look at the space over his shoulder, instead.

"Wow, I almost thought you were an otter or something! I've never heard of a cat that likes water. Not even a Summon."

The loud patter of water falling from my soaked fur onto the ground below was my only answer to the ninja's waiting silence. I was too used to the weird sensation of my fur being plastered flat to be bothered by how ridiculous I had to look, all of my spare attention focused on the potential threat before me. He hadn't asked a question, and I was an irredeemably contrary son of a bitch; it wasn't in my nature to just _offer_ things, even knowing that a lot of the Cats really would like to make contact with the Uchiha again. It would have been so much easier if Mirai had still been here, or Hisoki. But I was stuck: I didn't want to summon them now, because then it would give away that _I_ was the Summoner, and given my recent escapade… I would rather not be connected to what probably counted as a botched attempt at infiltration.

"You…can speak, can't you?" The Uchiha asked, and somehow I got the feeling that if he hadn't been so on-guard, he would've been rubbing the back of his head. I couldn't say I remembered a lot about pre-Massacre Uchiha behavior, but this couldn't be normal. Right?

"I can," I told him, not moving otherwise because the Sharingan tracked the tiniest of movements, and I _was_ holding a handful of sharp steel like I knew how to use them (I did). I didn't have any desire to fight an Uchiha, one that was probably well outside my experience level to fight, given the stage of his Sharingan alone.

"Okay, that's good!" the ninja smiled, and I felt my ears fold back, because he was trying to make eye contact again, and he needed to knock that shit off. "I need you to tell me what you were doing, because no one in Konohagakure has held the Cat Contract in years." The abrupt switch from cheery to deadly serious made my fur try to stand on end, cautious. Yikes. Someone was feeling edgy. How likely was this ninja to accept a line of bullshit? I mean, I didn't even need to _lie_ , exactly. Talking sideway had practically been my _hobby_ , back then.

"I was looking around," I told him bluntly, and it was true. "My family wants an Uchiha to sign our Contract again." Which was also not a lie, even if it was _so_ not the point. The Uchiha gave a little laugh, and even before he spoke I knew _he_ knew I was avoiding the subject. Ah well.

"That'll make a few people very happy," he said, either honestly or fantastically faked. If he didn't stop trying to stare me down, I might have to make his tree eat him, consequences be damned. Who the hell tried to stare down a cat that was larger than most dogs? "Who summoned you?"

"No one," I said waspishly, and continued before his raised eyebrows tried to wing off his forehead. "The Clan Head sent me out to find someone to sign."

"You're awfully grumpy and evasive for an emissary." The ninja said after a brief pause. "And you were swimming _away_ from the Village."

"No one told me where your village _is_." Which was also true –Umeko _showed_ me on the map, and Mirai had _guided_ me in the general direction–, and also complete bullshit. I knew it, the Uchiha knew it, and my expression _dared_ him to call me on it.

He dared. Of course he did. One would think that a clan that had signed with the Cats for so long would know better. Then again, it had been, what, twenty years since the last one had died?

"Really," he said, sarcasm thick enough to cut. I flicked my tail at him, spattering drops of water onto the river's surface, and he sighed…but didn't actually seem annoyed? "Yeah, alright, fine. Do you want to come with me and find someone to sign?" That was way too quick of a turn around, and besides that—

 _With_ him? Emphatically _no_. Too much attention, too much of a chance of the henge –no matter how good it apparently was– being discovered. (Was that his intent?) I wanted to nose around Konoha –hell _yes_ was I curious!– but not while I was being watched. Now, how did I get out of this without seeming suspicious? I could try to just cut and run, but that was the opposite of subtle…

Oh! Well, that just might work.

"We had someone in mind," I said, making a point of giving him my full attention, ears forward and almost making brief eye contact. "The son of our former Contractor, named Uchiha Obito. Can you bring him to me?"

I then had the pleasure of watching the curly-haired Uchiha's face go thoughtful before he visibly winced. On second thought, it was also _interesting_ , because Obito had been the black sheep of the family, hadn't he? And about a decade 'dead'? Yet this one knew of him immediately?

"Ah, that's…Obito died on-mission during the last war."

"Hm," I hummed shortly, staring at him with watchfully narrowed eyes as I tucked my shuriken away, and then turning my head dismissively away. I couldn't have broadcasted my intent any more clearly without actually _saying_ it.

"Wait! That's it? You're just _leaving_?" The incredulity in his voice did a lot to soothe away the irritation he'd caused me with his incessant challenge. (Oh, wait, was that a cat-only thing? What even were human eye contact rules?)

"I want to talk with Kaida-sama about this, first," I said, acutely aware of his position even if I didn't look it, because if he _really_ wanted to keep me here, disengaging would be the most dangerous part. "What is your name?"

"What's _yours_?" He shot back, twirling the kunai around his finger by the loop with an absent air that I didn't believe for a second.

"Iwazaru." The Uchiha snorted out a surprised, amused sound, and I bared my teeth at him, like a grin but really _not_.

"Shisui." He relented, and, hmm, that sounded familiar somehow. Why did I know that name? It was important, it _had_ to be important, if only because so many people _weren't_ named, and the Uchiha were all killed off before the 'story' started. So why did I know that name? "Are you going to come back after you talk to your…Clan Head?"

"Previous Clan Head," I corrected distractedly, probably watching him too closely while being deeply irritated with the sense that I'd forgotten something relevant. His wasn't just a name a lot of fanfic authors chose to pull from the depths of minor characters, was he? I shifted subtly, even though I was positive his Sharingan-red eyes hadn't missed anything. "And it depends." I said, but didn't elaborate. The sun had almost set, fiery orange light gone dusky purple; I must have spent a long time underground.

"That's it? You're going to leave, just like that? I know of at least five ninja that would sign your Contract in a heartbeat." He sounded serious and completely honest, but really, who could tell with ninja?

'That's not the _point_ ,' I _didn't_ say.

"Not you?" I challenged, and Shisui shrugged a single shoulder, wry smile turning his mouth.

"I put my name on the Crow's Contract a few years ago."

Yeah, alright. I flicked my tail dismissively and made sure I was facing _away_ from Konoha –and there were _so many ninja_ in there, touching the trees, beneath their branches, and the trees wanted to show me _more_ – when I readied myself to leap away. West was a good direction; River Country was west from here, wasn't it? Umeko made it sound like an interesting place.

"Iwazaru-san," Shisui called, and he had my full attention even before he landed on the river than had been our very clear line in the sand. "Is there any way that we can reach your Clan, in the future?"

I bit down on the first, unfairly snippy response – _"Offer your chakra to the Clans, like everyone else who_ _ **needed**_ _,"_ – and thought about it for a minute. The ninja waited easily below me, his feet not even making ripples on the water's surface, face the picture of earnest patience.

Well. What could it hurt? The family _did_ want an Uchiha.

"You know of Sora-ku?" I asked, and Shisui nodded, not a trace of humor in his expression. "There is a fortress of ninneko nearby, led by Nekomata. Nekomata hates humans, but if you find a way to convince him, he can pass messages to my Clan Head, Kana-sama." I paused, and thought, what the hell. "You can use my name; it might help."

"Thank you," the Uchiha said sincerely, and I nodded shortly, a little uncomfortable, before leaping away in a burst of chakra-assisted speed.

For nearly an hour, Shisui stayed on my tail –distant, but I felt the banked heat of his chakra, anyway, even without the ever-helpful trees–, fast, occasionally flickering and seeming to vanish when he began to fall behind, only to reappear much closer. He never made any move to engage, however, and eventually broke off his pursuit. Probably, I thought, just making sure I wasn't going to double back; he _did_ have some sense to him, as I suspected.

Huh. All told, not a bad first experience with a Konoha-nin. (Orochimaru didn't count.)

Next time, I might even find my way in _without_ being discovered.

 **/-/**

 **A/N:** Well? Let's hear it, lol. *claps hands together* Hmm, now, who will Yukito run into next... Suggestions? I'm still keeping that list.


End file.
